Saving Lives
by CitronPresse
Summary: Mark has cancer: how this affects his life and the lives of those close to him. Set post Season 3. Pairing: Mark/Meredith; Characters: Cast.
1. Sunday

A/N and disclaimer: I do not own _Grey's Anatomy _or its characters. Rated 'M' mainly for language. Reviews would be appreciated.

* * *

Chapter 1, Sunday

"Would you miss Mark if he went away?" Meredith asked cautiously.

They were sitting in her kitchen and Derek was half-reading a medical journal and drinking coffee. He didn't look up. "No," he said. Then, looking at her "Why? Is he going somewhere?"

She shook her head. "But," she tried again. "Hypothetically. If he went away for good? If you were never going to see him again . . . as long as you lived . . . ever. Would you miss him?"

He put down his journal and looked directly at her, confused and laughing slightly. "What are you talking about? Why?"

"I just wanted to know . . . in case you would want to say goodbye or something. In case it would change anything I wouldn't want it to . . . you know, regrets." Her words tailed off and she looked at him uncertainly.

"Meredith," he said. "Do you want to tell me what this is about?"

"No. It's fine. Nothing. Read your journal. Drink your coffee. It's okay."

"Okay," he said. "Good," and returned to his reading.

She paused, then took a deep breath. "He has cancer."

"Who?" Derek mumbled, not really paying attention now that an article's title had attracted his attention.

"Mark has cancer, " she said, too loudly. "Duodenal cancer. Stage 3. It's inoperable and he's doing some clinical trial oncology are running, because there's no established protocol for what he has. And it's not all that hopeful. And you're not supposed to know. He only told me because he wanted me to tell you some stuff when . . . if . . . But I think I you should know now, because I think you'd . . ." She trailed off, uncertain how to put what she wanted to say.

"He has cancer?" he said slowly. She nodded. "Mark?" She nodded again. "I didn't even know he was sick. Why doesn't he want me to know?"

She paused. This was so difficult. "Hardly anybody knows. He doesn't seem to want anybody to know, and he only told the Chief so far. Apart from me. And he only told me because he didn't want to tell you . . ." she winced as she heard her clumsy verboseness unfold "because he didn't want you to feel obligated to be friends with him again because he was dy. . . sick." She paused for breath. "He thought you might feel . . . obligated, even though you're not friends any more. Even though he would like to be. So, he told me stuff so that . . . when . . . if . . . you would know he didn't blame you for anything . . . that he only blamed himself."

"I understand," Derek said quietly. "That's a lot to put on you, though."

Her eyes widened. "No. No, really. He apologized for that, like a hundred times. He took me to dinner and he said … all that stuff. That it wasn't fair. And, he wondered if he was being selfish – making me carry this information around. But he wasn't. I completely understand. It's important. And I promised I wouldn't tell you, until … But, I don't think I can let you not have the chance to talk to him … be friends with him … help him. Whatever …"

Derek ran his hand over his face. He sat in silence for a few seconds. "Thank you," he said. "You did the right thing. I should know."

"Oh, that's good, " she exhaled, deeply relieved. "I knew you would want to know. And it's good you'll be friends again. He obviously misses you."

"Yeah . . . that probably won't happen, Meredith."

She stared at him, "Excuse me?"

"I understand why you told me and I think you did the right thing. And I get that he was trying not to pressure me into a . . . reconciliation. I appreciate that, actually. It's one of the two unselfish things I've ever known him to do. And, obviously, I'm not . . . happy; it's terrible for him. But," he hesitated and met her gaze," I don't think there's really anything left of our friendship. I think his instinct was right. It would be artificial to try to be friends again, even in this situation. If he had told me outright, I would probably have felt some compulsion to patch things up with him. But it would have been awkward. It's tragic, really," he shrugged, "but that's how things have worked out."

Meredith's thoughts were chaotic and she stumbled over her words as she tried to get out a coherent sentence. "Seriously? You don't care about him?" she finally managed. "Your best friend for most of your life? You don't care that he's in pain and frightened and lonely and probably dying? And that he has nobody to talk to about any of this? That I'm the best he's got? Someone he hardly even knows? You really don't care about this?"

"Meredith," he considered. "It's not that I don't care, I just think that there's no basis for my being involved. And, really, that – and everything else you describe – is what he chose when he slept with my wife, and when he valued ambition and sex over any kind of lasting ties with anyone."

She stared at him incredulously, lost for words. Finally, she said "I get that he hurt you. I get that you think he wrecked your marriage – although, don't you think that's a little naive? But I thought I knew you, I thought, whatever . . . stuff might come up, you were basically still . . ." 'McDreamy' suggested itself, but she was damned if she was going to say that now, and settled for "you. Clearly, I don't know you; clearly you're not the man I thought I fell in love with. I thought I knew you, but clearly I was wrong, and today I've been . . . disillusioned."

She got up and left the room as Derek stared after her.


	2. Monday

Chapter 2, Monday

"That all looks pretty good," said Meredith, looking up from the chart and smiling at the teenage girl in the bed in front of her. "And your face is healing really well. Obviously, it's Dr Sloan's call, but we should be able to do the procedure this morning as scheduled."

Amanda Marshall was a seventeen-year-old cheerleader, brought in with severe facial burns after a drunken accident with a firework after a football game. The previous week, Mark had performed skin grafts on her cheeks and forehead, which had taken without complications. This week she was scheduled for work on the more difficult burns around her eyes.

"Hey Amanda,' said Mark, as he walked into the room. "Dr Grey taking good care of you?" He smiled at Meredith, who responded distractedly, trying not to think about yesterday's conversation with Derek.

He took Amanda's chin in his hand and tilted her face to get a better look. "That's looking great," he said. "You're fine to go on to the next graft. Dr Grey'll prep you and then we'll go right ahead." He considered. "You know, when I get done with you, you're going to be happy that rocket hit you in the face?"

"Dr Sloan!" interjected Meredith, taken aback.

He carried on without paying any attention, "You're going to be even hotter than you were before the accident," he flirted with her.

Apparently, his unique style of bedside manner worked, because Amanda smiled at him, seemingly reassured.

"Dr Grey, can I have a word outside?" he said.

"Wasn't that a little inappropriate?" she asked, as they left the room.

"Why?" he asked. "She's seventeen; two weeks ago she was a bleached blonde airhead who's biggest concern in life was whether the quarterback would do her. Now she's disfigured, scared and stuck in the hospital. What should I have said?"

She was about to respond, when Derek walked past, giving instructions to a nurse. She stiffened and made a little, disgruntled noise.

Mark looked at her and chuckled. "Something wrong, Grey?"

"I'm fine," she snapped. "I don't want to talk about it."

He raised his eyebrows, but didn't pursue it. "So, this surgery is going to be much tougher than the last one. We're going to need a full thickness graft from her upper thigh, which means we'll need to surgically close it. Ideally, to minimize the risk of bleeding and infection – which is very high with these procedures – the closure would get done while I work on the graft site." He paused. "You're perfectly capable of doing the closure. I just need to know whether you're up for it."

"Seriously?" she said. "You want me to close the donor site?"

"You're a surgeon, aren't you?" he said.

"Well, yes . . ." she agreed, hesitantly.

"You sure about that?" he teased her.

"Of course I'm a surgeon," she said.

He sighed. "Is that yes or no?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "I can do the closure. Thank you for the opportunity."

"Okay then," he said. "Prep the patient. I'm going to get coffee. You want some?"

"Excuse me?'

"You want some coffee?" he said.

"You're offering to get me coffee?"

"Why do conversations with you always turn into confusion?" he asked.

"You have never in your life fetched coffee for an int . . . a resident," she said.

"Yeah, well, most residents aren't you," he said gently. "You know you're doing me a really huge favor?"

Right! she thought. That would be the one where I broke your confidence, only to discover that the 'best friend' you're so concerned for is devoid of human feelings. No coffee for me, then.

"It's only coffee, Grey."

"It is," she said, absently, still lost in thought. "It's only coffee. " She looked at him. "Since you raised the subject, are you okay?"

"Yeah, " he said, brushing off her question. "And I get to be the doctor today, which is a hell of a lot better than being the patient." He smiled. "Shall we run that again? Prep the patient. I'm going for coffee. I'll bring you some back."

* * *

"That was amazing!" Meredith was psyched by the surgery and talked incessantly as they scrubbed out. "It was so quick and clean and intricate and--"

"You did a good job on the closure, Grey," Mark cut off her rambling. "I don't think I can express myself with as much breathless enthusiasm as you, but consider yourself complimented."

"That's just unkind," she laughed. "But thank you."

"You understand the post-op procedures?" he asked. "It's really important that you monitor her for any changes in temperature that could indicate infection. And, if anything around her eyes starts to look suspicious in any way, you page me, right?"

She nodded.

"And--" he started to speak, but then broke off and closed his eyes in evident pain. After a few seconds, he sighed and opened his eyes. He continued, pretending that nothing had happened "Try to keep her mother out of her room as long as possible. The woman's seriously deranged, and I'm not only saying that because of all the cheap work you can see she's had done."

Meredith hesitated, but then said softly, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I know," she said. "But, I'm . . . concerned."

"About my competence?" he asked, harshly.

"God, no!" she protested. "About you!"

"You think I'm off my game?" he asked defensively, but obviously wanting an answer.

"No," she said. "I believe we covered that. I was just thinking maybe you could use some rest . . . some time off? People do that, you know?"

"Because I worry that I might be," he confessed, disregarding her. "The Chief said it was fine to keep working as long as I felt I could. And, the Bitch was okay with it."

Meredith gave him a questioning look.

"My oncologist, Dr Lindstrom. The Bitch suits her better, though," he explained

"That sounds like a constructive doctor-patient relationship!"

He ignored her and went on, "And I'm fine, most of the time. But, sometimes it just catches up with me. The last half-hour in there I was getting really tired. What if my attention had wandered? I mean, who the fuck needs a plastic surgeon who might screw up any minute and leave someone scarred for life?" He took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. "Sorry," he said, awkwardly. "Let's just forget I said that, shall we?"

"I should probably go help with post-op," said Meredith tactfully.

He sighed. "Listen. Thanks, Grey." he said. "Maybe you're right about rest. I'm going to crash in the on-call room for a half-hour. Would it totally piss you off if I asked you to stop by and make sure I wake up?"

"No" she said. "That's good. Get some rest. It's no problem." She remembered Derek and added "Don't feel bad about asking me to do stuff if you need to."

* * *

Cristina Yang raised her eyebrows as Meredith came out of the on-call room.

"Meredith!" she called, and added "Over here, now!" when Meredith looked up.

"Seriously?!" she hissed.

"What?" Meredith said, preoccupied.

"Seriously? You and McSteamy?!"

"Me and McSteamy, what?"

"Doing it, obviously!"

Meredith pulled a face. "Why would you . . .? How could you even . . .? Really, Cristina. That's just . . .!" she made a disgusted sound.

"Right, you're right. He doesn't bring you coffee, and you're not always in on his surgeries, and you didn't have dinner with him, and you weren't just in the on-call room with him? Oh, and Shepherd's NOT not talking to you. You're absolutely right. How could I?!"

"_I'm_ not talking to _Derek_," Meredith muttered, "not the other way around. The other stuff is coincidental. He's a good surgeon and he has interesting cases. And I _like _coffee!"

"Interesting cases like . . . increasing rich women's cup sizes?"

"I've never worked on that stuff. I've only worked on reconstructive procedures. We did this amazing skin graft today. You know, she had burns right under her--"

"Do I look like I care about skin grafts? And I don't believe you. You're being . . . clandestine."

Meredith looked at her, her head on one side. "Cristina. I'm not lying to you. Nothing's going on. But, please can we stop talking about this?"

"If it makes you uncomfortable," Cristina smirked.

"It does," she said. "But not, NOT, for the reason you think. So, please, be my friend and just shut up."

Cristina began to protest but, seeing that Meredith was serious, gave in. "Okay – tell me all about the nice skin graft and the fascinating burns. I promise to give you forty-nine per cent attention." She paused. "I don't know what the problem is, though. I'd do him. That is, if it was only once . . . and I got to see him naked . . . and didn't have to talk to him." Meredith shot her a look. "Okay, okay; fascinating burns."


	3. Tuesday Morning

Chapter 3, Tuesday Morning

It was a damp, dreary, typical Seattle morning and very quiet at the hospital. Mark was in the elevator returning from an appointment with 'The Bitch,' when it stopped, the doors opened and Derek walked in.

"Hey," said Mark and, receiving only raised eyebrows in response, sighed and looked at the floor, until he became aware that Derek was staring at him. He looked up.

"You know, I get that I'm pretty, Derek. But is there something I can do for you?"

In reply, Derek grunted, shook his head and looked into space.

"Are we having a bad day?" Mark tried again.

"I'm fine," Derek mumbled.

"Except that Grey's not talking to you, right?"

"Excuse me?" Derek said coldly.

"Well, is she?"

"Is my life really that interesting to you? Oh, wait, of course. Living vicariously always was your thing, especially where women in my life were concerned."

Mark raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. Forget it." He stared at the floor again.

After a pause, Derek cleared his throat and said, attempting to sound casual, "Are you okay?"

Mark looked up, assessing him. "Sure," he said. "I'm fine."

Derek gave a nod and then said, "It's just that you . . . you look like you lost some weight."

"Really? Stress, rain, too much alcohol, not enough sex, I guess." he smiled.

"You? Not enough sex?" Derek said, snorting.

"Yeah, well . . . " Mark shrugged and they lapsed into silence. Eventually he asked, "Were we just having a conversation?"

"It would appear that we were," said Derek, smiling slightly. He considered, "You really do look like you lost weight. Are you sure you--"

And as it became apparent what Derek was trying to avoid saying, Mark groaned. "She told you, didn't she?"

"Hmm?" Derek asked, stalling.

"Grey told you that I have cancer."

Derek paused, breathed in and then nodded, "Yes. She did. She thought I should know."

"Fuck!" He leaned back against the elevator wall. "I guess I can't blame her," he said quietly. "It was kind of a dumb request anyway."

"It was too much responsibility for her. It would have been too much responsibility for anyone."

"How long have you known?" Mark asked.

"Meredith told me at the weekend."

Mark considered and then laughed, "Okay, yeah . . . now I get why she's pissed at you. She told you and you said you didn't care." He looked at Derek, weighing him up. "You know why she's pissed, right?"

"Not really. And, I didn't say I didn't care, I just said--"

"Because now she thinks you'd feel the same way about her.'

"How could you possibly--"

"It's obvious. She saw you with Addison and now she's seen your reaction to this. Grey thinks that if she screws up; if she disappoints you; if she, god forbid, cheats on you then, some time she'll need you and you'll just give her that cold, unforgiving thing you do."

"I would never do that to her," Derek said quietly. "There is no comparison between--"

Mark wasn't really listening to him and interrupted again. "Maybe that's why I told her? I wanted to tell you. You were really the only person I wanted to tell but--"

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. George O'Malley, pushing a patient in a wheelchair, attempted to come in.

"This one's taken," said Mark harshly and pressed the button to close the door. As the door closed and the elevator started to move, he hit the emergency stop.

"But I didn't want to know for certain that you couldn't give a fuck."

"Mark. Do we have really have to do this now?"

Mark closed his eyes. "Damn it, Derek. We've been best friends for--"

"Until you slept with my wife." Derek said, matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, well, somebody had to," Mark muttered.

"Of course. Because, as my best friend, when you noticed that my wife was having problems with me, you couldn't just, say, tell me. You, naturally, just went ahead and--"

"It wasn't that simple," Mark broke in. It would always be impossible to explain this situation, especially to someone who didn't want to hear it.

"I think it would have been for most people," Derek retorted, then raised his hands in frustration. "That's enough! We've been through this before and nothing has changed." He sighed. "Except that now you've saddled Meredith with this impossible guilt-trip."

Mark felt desolate. He hadn't wanted to have this conversation. But, now that it was happening, this wasn't how it was supposed to go. "I just wanted you to know some stuff," he said miserably.

"Don't people usually write letters in these situations?" Derek sniped, unwilling to relinquish his anger.

"Seriously? Isn't it supposed to be me that's the insensitive jerk?" Mark turned towards the wall, leaned his head against it and sighed. "I thought it would be better coming from Grey," he said. "I thought all that breathless sincerity would convey what I wanted to say better than any 'If you're reading this you'll know I've gone' letter would. And I thought that if you did happen to feel anything . . . " he paused and swallowed, "if you did happen to feel anything, she could help you through it."

Derek closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, his mood had softened slightly. "So, what stuff did you want to say?" he asked.

"I thought Grey already told you," Mark said. "Anyway, I can't say it now."

Derek raised his eyebrows and gave a slight laugh. "If it's so important that you had to enter into this pact with my girlfriend, compromise her relationship with me and" he looked around the stationary elevator "imprison me, maybe it deserves an airing?"

"It's not the sort of stuff you can say at work, when you're ostensibly perfectly healthy and standing in a goddamn elevator, and when the person you're telling obviously doesn't give a . . ." He shifted around uncomfortably and then turned back to face Derek. "Okay." He took a deep breath. "I wanted you to know that I would really like to have been friends with you again. That . . . dying . . . without having that back would be a huge deal for me. But that, I got why you didn't want to and that, even though I didn't like it, I didn't blame you. And, for what it's worth, I still considered you my friend."

There was a long pause. Finally, Derek said softly "Listen. How about we start up the elevator and go back to work. And then, later on, when our shifts are finished, we go get a drink? Does that sound--"

"I'm not supposed to drink," Mark muttered, releasing the emergency stop.

"You're not supposed to, or you actually don't?"

"I've been drinking less," he conceded, then asked skeptically, "You're not doing this just to do the right thing are you?'

Derek considered before saying "No. I'm surprising even myself by saying that, but I'm not. I guess Meredith was right. I would miss you if . . . I would regret being an insensitive jerk." he smiled resignedly. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I . . ." he trailed off, uncertain how to express himself.

"It's okay," said Mark cautiously. "You don't need to apologize. It's . . ." he shrugged. "Thanks."

The elevator stopped at the surgical floor and they got out and walked in opposite directions.

* * *

"You know," said George, over lunch outside, "Sloan kicked me out of an elevator this morning. I had a patient with me and he refused to let us in. Shepherd was in there as well and he didn't even say anything."

"Derek and Mark were in the elevator?" Meredith asked.

"Well, yeah. Is that unusual? It is the easiest way to get around the hospital."

"Did Derek get out when you tried to get in?" Meredith ignored him.

"No. I just said--"

Meredith stared at him. "Did you notice if they were talking to each other?"

"Not really," George was confused. "I was more concerned with the patient being hit by the elevator door!"

Meredith stood up abruptly, spilling coffee without noticing and rushed inside.

George looked at Alex, who shrugged. "Dude, the women in this hospital are crazy. Haven't you learned that by now?" He stood up, smirked and patted George on the shoulder. "Never mind, Georgie - you've got another year as an intern to catch up."

* * *

"Did you talk to him?" Meredith interrupted Derek in discussion with one of the senior anesthesiologists.

He smiled, but held up his hand to silence her. "As I was saying, Dr Stern. I think it's going to be a long procedure and the patient's already very unstable. Maybe we could get together first thing tomorrow and go over all the relevant stats, so we're both on the same page?"

Dr Stern nodded and said "7:30 okay? I'll go over the chart before then. Thanks for the heads up, Shepherd."

Derek turned to Meredith. "Something I can do for you, Dr Grey?" he asked, charmingly. "I don't seem to have seen that much of you recently. Have you been well?"

"George said--"

"That his patient was going to sue Mark for trying to kill her with an elevator door?"

"You did talk to him!"

"I did."

She smiled. "You're still you! You're still McDreamy! You're not--"

"A bitter, heartless bastard who doesn't care his friend may be dying and might treat his girlfriend the same way if she did something to piss him off . . . say, burning the toast one morning?" He smiled at her

Her eyes grew wide and she smiled elatedly at him. "You understood me," she whispered. "You got why I was so . . . why I couldn't . . .?"

"I had a little help with that, actually," he said, and then kissed her gently. "It's okay, Meredith. You did a good thing. Thank you."


	4. Tuesday Evening

Chapter 4, Tuesday Evening

Mark's day had consisted of his appointment in oncology, his encounter with Derek in the elevator and an afternoon spent with a hospital lawyer trying to make sense out of the paperwork related to a lawsuit against a fourth year plastics resident. Basically, it had been a shit day, which had left him feeling emotionally battered and pissed off in close to equal measure. Obviously, it was an immense relief that Derek wanted to know him again. Although, the ambivalence that Derek had demonstrated in the elevator left him feeling a little guarded. But now that they were here, sitting in a bar that Derek went to when he wanted to be alone, he just wanted to hang out and try to get comfortable with the situation. What he _didn_'_t_ want to do was talk about cancer and he could sense that Derek did. He could understand this, of course, but that didn't make it any more appealing and, so far, he had managed to steer their conversation in other directions.

Derek, however, was now returning from the bar with their third round of drinks and looked reflective.

"So, are you in any pain?" Derek asked, as he reached the table.

"Yeah. . . sometimes." Mark shrugged. "You know."

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's really fine. We have other things we can--" He stopped and a took a breath. "You know, the hell it is! We've sat here for over an hour discussing surgeries, litigation, sports, Meredith and rating the sexual attractiveness of the new interns. I'm here. I'm talking to you. You wanted to talk to me, so--"

"If you'd just shut up, Derek, maybe I would," Mark said, resigning himself to the inevitable change of subject, but stalling anyway.

"Okay. That's fair. " Derek looked down at his drink and laughed sheepishly. "Meredith may have rubbed off on me a little."

"That sounds kind of fun," said Mark.

"What?" asked Derek, confused.

"Grey rubbing off on you. You think I could watch that some time?" He smirked, as Derek shook his head in amused disgust.

Derek took a mouthful of his drink. "Try to be serious for five minutes. There's some things I don't understand about all this.'

Mark sighed. "If we have to."

"Well, first of all, why don't you want anybody to know?"

"Denial, mostly, I guess," he said. "If nobody else knows, I can try to pretend it's not real. And, I don't think I could deal with people being 'nice' all the time."

"Really? Do you think that most people like you enough to bother?" Derek couldn't resist joking.

"Nice, Derek. Thank you. So supportive."

"So, explain to me why you're not having surgery. Wouldn't that be the--?"

Mark interrupted him, "Not operable, according to the Bitch," he said bad-temperedly.

"Sorry, but who is 'The Bitch?'"

"The Bitch," Mark growled, "is my oncologist. Dr Lindstrom. She …"

"Julia Lindstrom?" asked Derek, surprised, and when Mark nodded, said, "She is probably one of the last people in the world I would call a bitch. She referred an astrocytoma to me for surgery recently. She was insightful and nice and . . . well very attractive, I thought! She was a pleasure to work with."

"Yeah, well, maybe she's fine to work with. You should try being her patient. She's judgmental, dismissive, tactless and negative and . . . a total bitch. 'Surely, Dr Sloan, a surgeon of your caliber and experience should have noticed something was wrong before now? No? Well, that's unfortunate because, now that the cancer's progressed this far we really don't have that many options.'".

"Well, I suppose that's a reasonable question, isn't it? I was going to ask you the same--"

"Because if your back hurt after long surgeries and you had an occasional bad hangover, you would naturally leap to the conclusion that you had a kind of cancer that almost nobody's ever heard of and, apparently, almost nobody ever survives?"

"I have heard of duodenal cancer," Derek said, needlessly stating the obvious.

"Well, yeah," Mark said. "But who the hell knows what it is or would recognize its stupidly vague initial symptoms? I got tested three fucking days after the pain started, and even the gastroenterologist thought it was an ulcer." Mark closed his eyes, swallowed and pressed his palms against his forehead. "Would you get me another drink?" he asked, without looking up.

"You haven't finished--"

"I know that," he said, abruptly. "I just need a minute."

* * *

When Derek came back, he sat down and put the glasses on the table without speaking.

"Sorry," Mark said. "When I actually think about this, I don't deal with it all that well. Mostly, I just try to work long hours, not think about it and hope, one way or another, it'll all just end."

Derek was a little shocked by this, but just said, "Did you consider taking medical leave? Maybe it would be good for you not to be at work? You could be more engaged in your recovery."

He shrugged. "I don't know what I'd do if I didn't work. Sit around waiting to die and enumerating my mistakes? At least this way I get to do the one thing I don't routinely screw up."

Derek hesitated, but then asked, "You're not concerned you might, I don't know, lose concentration?"

"Yeah, I am. Pretty much every time I go into the OR lately. Didn't Grey tell you about my little post-op crisis of confidence?" Derek shook his head.

"Sorry," he said again, "So far it's been fine and, anyway, I'm probably a better plastic surgeon on my worst day than most others are on their best. Hey, don't look at me like that," he said, noticing Derek's raised eyebrows and stifled laugh. "But," he took a deep breath, "sometimes . . . increasingly . . . I worry that something'll happen." He looked directly at Derek. "You think I should resign?"

"I think you should probably take medical leave and focus on recovering. Resigning is a little fatalistic, don't you think?"

Mark looked down and played with his drink. "I don't know. I don't want to talk about this any more. But, thanks. This is the first sensible conversation I've had about this . . ." He faltered and then said, softly "I missed you, I would have . . ." He trailed off, not knowing how to express his feelings.

"I know" Derek said. "Me too." He considered for a moment. "Did you tell Addison?" he asked.

"No," said Mark.

"Do you want me to tell her?"

"God, no!" Mark stared at him in disbelief.

Derek shrugged. "She was your friend for a long time as well as . . . well . . . " he became uncomfortable. "She would want to know."

"She wouldn't," said Mark. "She'd think she _should_ want to know. She'd stress out and feel guilty and get on a plane . . . and it would all be so tragically empty and depressing and fucked up. She has a new life and she doesn't want me, if she ever did." He sighed deeply and then looked at Derek. "Seriously, I can't talk about this anymore. Can't we go back to surgeries and Grey rubbing off on you?" he smiled.

"You're pretty pleased with that, aren't you?" Derek said, conceding the change of subject.

Mark grinned, "Derek," he said, "It's not that I'm pleased with it. It's just that it evokes such--"

"Okay, enough, already. It's getting really old."


	5. Wednesday Morning

Chapter 5, Wednesday Morning

"So, I'm working with you again today," Meredith said, smiling as she walked up to Mark, who stood at the nurses' station reading a chart.

"Did you do something bad?" he asked, without looking up from the chart.

"No!" she laughed. "Callie said you had a tertiary rhinoplasty this afternoon and I thought it sounded . . ."

". . . like a long, complex, tedious exercise in damage control after a member of my department who should never have qualified screwed up the secondary procedure?" He sighed. "You know, you don't have to baby-sit me, Grey."

She didn't know how to respond.

"Just try to be careful you don't end up specializing in plastics just because you couldn't tear yourself away from me," he growled in her ear, in a disturbingly angry imitation of his McSteamy flirting tone.

"So," she said, trying to dissipate the tension his mood was creating, "Derek was a little drunk by the time I saw him last night."

"The guy never could hold his liquor," said Mark, looking at the chart again.

"You look pretty good considering I heard you were mixing scotch and tequila," she said.

"That's because I've had decades to perfect my façade," he said morosely, making a note on the chart.

Meredith sighed. Was she supposed to ask him what was wrong or pretend that she hadn't noticed? And any minute, she supposed, he would make some flippant, deflecting comment . . .

"Anyway, the tequila was your fault," he said. "Derek thought we should find out what you see in it."

. . . and leave her feeling like she'd missed some opportunity for . . . _something_.

"Take a look at this," he interrupting her confusion, and handed her the chart. "This is your patient for this afternoon. The woman went to some 1-800-surgeon to get a nasal hump reduced. When she came round from the anesthetic, she couldn't breath normally. Her nose looked pretty .. ish, I guess; but the nasal valve area was decreased. So, she was diagnosed with Post-rhinoplasty Nasal Obstruction and her insurance company sent her here for revision surgery. And _we_ somehow managed to trash her nose, cosmetically and functionally, so that now she has a collapsed nasal valve and looks like crap . . ."

He paused, raising his eyebrows at her, as she began to laugh. "What?" he said.

She shrugged but couldn't stop laughing. Truthfully, she didn't really know why she found the case quite so funny and suspected that she was just laughing to dispel her anxiety.

'I guess it is kind of ridiculous," he said irritably "You get that you'll probably be here all night on this thing?"

His pager went off and he sighed and pulled it out. When he read the message he looked floored. "You think it's a bad sign when your oncologist pages you?" he asked her quietly.

Meredith thought it probably was, but just shrugged awkwardly and suggested, "Maybe it's just convenient for her."

"Whatever," he said. "I haven't got time for her now." He sighed and held out his hand for the chart. "Check on my other patients, okay? Page me if you think I need to see anything. When you're done with that, we'll go take a look at Rhinoplasty Woman."

"That's not nice," said Meredith. "She has a name, right?" She struggled to see the chart's label.

"_I'm_ not nice?" he said. "Was it me who found her traumatic experiences amusing?"

"I think I've spent way too much time with you," she said dryly. "I'm going to see your patients and be . . . empathetic." She walked away down the hallway, as Mark sighed in relief that he would be left alone for a while.

He had not wanted Meredith to work with him today. He had wanted someone that he could feel justified in abusing. Evidently, there had been a reason he'd been told not to drink. He felt like shit. And not just hung-over shit, seriously shit. At some point during the night he had woken up feeling horribly sick. When the violent, but thankfully short-lived, puking had stopped and he had just about slept for a while, he was woken again by an oppressive, burning pain in his upper abdomen that still hadn't gone away. He had been drinking coffee all morning, which he didn't think was doing anything for his stomach, but had at least kept him awake. It was only stubbornness and the necessity of cleaning up other people's messes that had made him come to work at all.

He had also been unable to stop thinking about Addison. He had told Derek last night that seeing her again, in this situation, would be 'fucked up, empty and depressing' and ever since that he had been haunted by the desolate realization of just how true this was. There was nothing left of them. She didn't want him. She probably never had. Her world would be basically the same if he didn't exist. And, in some ways, now, he felt that he didn't. Because, he had tried--maybe he wasn't very good at it after so many years of pretense--but he had tried to show her who he was; what was behind the slutty, arrogant, cynical surgeon; and what was behind the fucked-up mess that hid behind this image. He had tried to show her himself. The part that loved her because he couldn't help it; the part that would do anything for her; the part that wanted to be uncompromisingly honest and intimate; the part that wanted to be loved in return; the part that he never showed anybody, not really even himself, in case it got obliterated. And it had, because Addison, in the end, had regarded this part of him as simply irrelevant.

He hoped that what he'd said to Derek last night about being a better surgeon on his worst day than others on their best was true. Because while this wasn't his worst day, it was one of the worse ones, and he had to spend the afternoon being Mark Sloan, Head of Plastics, doing brilliant surgery to reverse the disaster this woman's face had become and avert a lawsuit against the hospital.

So he wanted somebody to abuse. Karev would do, except that was complicated and he would probably give as good as he got. George O'Malley would be perfect. But, he got Meredith; who his best friend loved; who so almost understood him that it scared him to let her in more than a very little; and there was no way that he could abuse her. At least, no more than he just had.

There was a part of him that had just wanted to tell her he was having a shitty day. But it didn't seem fair to load her with any more of his problems. So he had made a few sardonic remarks, and been a little 'McSteamy' – he hated that they called him that - and although he almost lost it with the "façade" remark, he had got it back together. But there was a part of him that just wanted to take it all out on somebody, and he wondered whether he could say that he needed an intern for this afternoon's procedure, and get O'Malley assigned to him as well. Because, after the surgery, he would have to do something about this page from Julia Lindstrom, and he thought that hearing whatever she thought was urgent enough to page him for might just about finish him.

"Your patients are all good," he heard Meredith say as she returned. "And, Amanda got a look at her grafts in the mirror for the first time this morning and she asked me to say thank you. She's healing really nicely."

When he didn't reply, she asked, finally, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."


	6. Wednesday Evening

_A/N: This chapter includes an original character, Dr Julia Lindstrom, Mark's oncologist._

* * *

Chapter 6, Wednesday Evening

When the surgery was over, at around seven in the evening, Mark forced himself to go up to oncology. He half hoped that Julia Lindstrom wouldn't be still be working at this time. But a light was coming from her office and the door was open. She was engrossed in something she was typing on the computer, so he studied her for a few moments, putting off the moment when he would have to talk to her.

He wondered why Derek liked her. He supposed she was quite attractive . . . sort of blonde and Scandinavian looking . . . even hot, he conceded. Kind of like a Swedish porn actress in the opening scenes of the film when they're still pretending there's a plot and they all still have their clothes on . . .'Topless Nordic Doctors' maybe?

She must have sensed him watching her, because she looked up, slightly disoriented. "Well," she said. "That's only. . ." she checked the clock on her computer "seven hours since I paged you. Do you always respond so promptly?"

Hot, that is, if you didn't take into account her obnoxious personality.

"I had a surgery," he said, and crossed his arms defensively.

"That's fine," she said, shrugging. "It's your life." She looked back at her computer screen and started typing again.

He sighed. "Was there a reason that you paged me?"

She finished the sentence she was typing before looking up.

"Sit down," she said firmly. "There are some things we need to clarify because, right now, you are not allowing me to do my job."

Unable to think of anything sarcastic to say, he sat down, a little dismayed by his compliance. He hated coming up here. She made him feel . . . neutered. The cancer made him feel neutered. He wished she would give up this pretense of discussing a treatment that she had made clear was unlikely to work and just let him get on with what was left of the escalating fuck-up that his life had become.

"First of all," she said, "when you and I are in the same room, I'm the doctor, not you!"

He regarded her sulkily, but still couldn't think of a corrosive response.

"So, if I'm going to continue treating you, you're going to have to stop resenting me and you're going to have to give up this . . ." she searched for the right phrase "casually self-destructive attitude you've taken to your cancer, because that's going to kill you."

Her perception was uncomfortably accurate and he searched around for some response that would fend her off, only managing to get out "Okay, but--" before she held up her hand to cut him off.

"Not finished," she said. "The oral protocol you're currently on is not powerful enough for what you have. I went along with this, against my better judgment, because you insisted that you had to keep working. But, it's not doing anything for you, and we need to make some radical changes. So – and please listen to me when I say this - I'm more than prepared to try to help you, but I'm not prepared to have you listed as my patient and just sit around and watch you die." She paused. "That's all," she said. 'You can talk now."

Overwhelmed, he resorted to stalling. "You worked with Derek Shepherd, right?"

"Is that relevant?" she snapped.

"No," he said, "It's just that he has this idea--"

"I meant, you can talk about _you_," she interrupted.

"I know," he said quietly. "You'll have to give me a minute on that, though," and, unexpectedly, she had the sensitivity to let it go.

"So" he said, " I was talking to him last night and he has the idea that you're not as much of a bitch as I think you are." He smirked a little challengingly at her.

"Is that right?" she said slowly, trying to conceal that she was smiling slightly. "The thing is, though, I am . . . at least as much of a bitch, or maybe even worse. I was just being nice to him because I thought he was cute."

He didn't want to flirt with her but he wanted to buy some more time and it just came out on autopilot, "You don't think I'm cute?"

"No," she said, curtly. "Do you think, now that we've got that over with, we can we go back to the reason you're here?"

"I guess," he said and looked down at the floor. "I thought that . . . you more or less said that this was . . . probably . . . terminal," he faltered.

"See," she said, frustrated. "That's the problem right there. You interpret everything I say to you as though I just signed your death warrant. Frankly, I think you regard dying as the easy option."

As soon as she had said that she regretted her tactlessness. "Excuse me," she said. "That was uncalled for."

"No, it's okay," he said, preoccupied. "Maybe I do think it's the easy option. Maybe it is? I just . . ." He gave up on words and looked up at her, trying to convey some kind of understanding that was beyond him to express. The profound vulnerability that showed briefly in his eyes stunned and disconcerted her and, flustered, she took refuge in medical facts.

She reached across her desk for a file. "Okay," she said, opening it. "The tests that you had done yesterday came back and they show that there's some metastasis into the peritoneal cavity." She paused to wait for him to take it in. "Also, as I said, your current therapy isn't doing much for the primary tumor. Which doesn't mean that it's any worse," she said. "It just means it's not getting better and with the spread to the peritoneum . . . well, all that's not good. But it doesn't mean that we can't try to do something."

She paused.

"I know being on a clinical trial can seem a little vague. But this really is a powerful form of immunotherapy that I have a lot of hopes for and, to date, we're having some success with it."

She wished that he would say something, but as he didn't she continued.

"I'd like to change your treatment to the intravenous form of this protocol," she said. "You'd have to be admitted for about two weeks and then commit yourself to up to eight weeks of intensive outpatient therapy." She paused. "That means you'd have to take medical leave for at least some of that time; and you'd have to be committed to the process."

After a long pause he said, quietly. "I guess I could do that."

"Oh," she said, surprised that it went that easily. "Well, that's good. Some patients find the side effects a little brutal. And there are still no guarantees. But, this is your best option right now."

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," she repeated. "Then, we should really get going with this as soon as possible."

"I have to wind up a couple of things first," he said. "I could probably start on Friday."

She smiled at him. "That's great," she said. "I'm really happy you're going to try."

He laughed a little cynically. "Yeah, well, I'm pretty good at that. You think this time it'll work out?" He sighed. "Sorry . . . you're not my shrink. "

After a pause, he said softly "Thank you . . . I . . ." his words trailed off uncertainly.

"That's okay," she said. "I understand."

He got up and walked towards the door. "Just in case there's any doubt, though," he said as he left, giving her a slight, tired smirk. "I still think you're a bitch."

"Fine with me," she said. "Maybe that way you'll do what I tell you."

* * *

By the time Mark had arrived back at his hotel room, he had reached a decision. He poured a glass of scotch – he could stop drinking tomorrow – and sat down on the edge of the bed by the phone.

As he called Addison's cell phone, he found that he was physically shaking. He willed her not to answer, so that he could leave a message on her voicemail and, for once in their relationship, he got what he wanted.

When the tone sounded he swallowed, before saying, unsteadily "Hey, Add. Please don't freak out. I don't need you to call me back or anything. I . . . I want to say something." He hesitated. "I need you to know that I loved you and that I don't, and couldn't, regret being with you because you were . . . everything." He sighed before going on. "But, the thing is . . . now . . . I'm done. I have to be. I have some stuff I need to deal with and I can't do it if I'm still . . . expecting anything. I'm not saying this to hurt you. I'm not saying it to manipulate you. I'm saying it because I don't think I can have a life if I keep on loving you. So, I'm done. I'm seriously not trying to be a jerk. I just needed to say this so that _I_ know that it's true."

He hung up, finished his drink and then crawled into bed, unable and unwilling to think or feel anything else that day.


	7. Thursday

Chapter 7, Thursday

Meredith stood at the OR board, drinking coffee and idly reading the list of procedures.

Cristina walked up behind her and read the board over her shoulder. "Oh look, Mer," she said. "They've canceled Sloan's surgery. Whatever will you find to do with yourself today?"

Meredith sighed. "There is something seriously wrong with you," she said. "Do you think it might help you if you stopped fantasizing about my imaginary sex life and focused on your own?"

Cristina considered this. "Maybe you're right," she said. 'Who do you suggest?"

Meredith rolled her eyes. "Because this is my specialty now? Sleeping with inappropriate men?"

Cristina shrugged. "Wouldn't it be futile to deny what's so obviously true?" she asked archly.

"Well, thank you _so_ much. I'm _so _glad you're my person." Meredith was amused despite herself. "Okay . . . here's a suggestion for you. How about the Chief?" she asked.

"Be serious!" Cristina snorted.

"Alex?"

"I meant more serious, not less."

"Uhm . . . Izzie?" Meredith joked.

'I never played with Barbie as a kid and I'm far too old to start now," Cristina responded with feigned dignity. She narrowed her eyes and smirked meaningfully. "How about McSteamy?"

Meredith hesitated almost imperceptibly, but then said quickly, "There you go. And, if that doesn't work out for you, since you don't like my ideas, you'll just have to go to Joe's and see who turns up. But," she said "you can't have Derek."

Cristina raised her eyebrows disdainfully. "I get that tangled emotional baggage turns_ you_ on. I just want sex!"

"He does that too!" Meredith protested. "And I have no more suggestions for you. You're on your own. Go away."

As Cristina left, she drifted back to staring at the board. The problem was that, despite fending off Cristina's innuendo, she actually _was_ disturbed by Mark's canceled surgery. She didn't even know whether she would have been in on it, but she knew that she was worried about him and that she . . . she tried to stop herself thinking this . . . missed him. _Seriously_? After less than twelve hours? She glanced around, concerned that somebody might somehow have read her thoughts.

The thing was, she liked working with him. Ever since he'd told her about the cancer -- well, before, even, but she hadn't really noticed at the time. There was this understanding between them. They got each other. And even though communication wasn't always easy, she always felt somehow . . . safe with him. She had convinced herself that she wanted to work with him so she could make sure he was okay and -- she knew he hated this and tried to conceal it -- take care of him. Now she was unsure whether her real reason had been so that he could take care of her.

"Are you busy today, Grey?" Miranda Bailey's voice startled her.

"Yes . . . no . . . I was just . . . " she shrugged helplessly. "I'm a little tired," she apologized.

"I didn't ask you how you were feeling -- I asked you whether you were busy. I have an . . . " she inhaled irritably "unexpected mastectomy in an hour. Would you like to scrub in?" Bailey's attitude to Meredith had eased a little since she'd made resident.

"Unexpected?"

Bailey indicated the board. "Dr Sloan's surgery," she said, still annoyed. "As though I have nothing better to do than pick up surgeries that attendings can't be bothered with. At least nobody's suggested that I do the immediate reconstruction she was scheduled for afterwards."

"Why wouldn't someone from plastics do it?" Meredith asked, preoccupied and not fully listening.

"Why wouldn't he do the damn procedure himself?" Bailey grumbled. "The Chief said he's 'not available' . . . whatever the hell that means! Though why _I _have to do it, I don't know. Evidently he specifically asked for me to take it over. There was some message that I 'ought to be happy that someone still thought of me as the Nazi and not just mommy.'" She sighed, exasperated.

Meredith smiled. "I believe, in English, that means he thinks you're a good surgeon."

Bailey eyed her dubiously. "That arrogant son of a bitch thinks I'm a good surgeon?" she asked.

Meredith shrugged.

Bailey considered. "I haven't felt like the Nazi in a while," she said thoughtfully. "You still think of me that way?"

"You're Dr Bailey," Meredith affirmed. "You'll always be the Nazi."

"So, do you want to scrub in on this mastectomy?"

Meredith nodded. "Sure. Why not?"

"Are you all right, Grey?"

Meredith sighed. "I'm fine," she said irresolutely. If only this were true.

* * *

George felt guilty about Izzie. Guilty and dirty, wrong, conflicted and powerless. So, when his wife assigned him to do administration with Sloan for the afternoon, he accepted it without complaining, which was the stance he was trying to take with her on most things right now.

"Uh . . . Dr Sloan?" he said nervously as he approached Mark, who was bent over a pile of charts.

Mark didn't reply.

"Callie . . . uh, Dr Torres sent me to . . . she said you needed an intern."

Mark turned his head to look at him and for a few seconds George was reminded of a sadistic cat eyeing up a mouse. "Do you think you could mention to Mrs O'Malley that next time I'd rather have her?" he said sleazily.

George said nothing. Truthfully, he hated Mark. He hated that he'd slept with Callie and that, as far as he could tell, was constantly propositioning her to do it again. More than this he hated the impotent feeling that his shame over Izzie instilled in him, because he didn't feel like he had the right to say anything about any of this.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. "George!" Izzie said urgently in his ear. "I need to talk to you."

Mark watched this with amused interest.

"Not now," George hissed. "I'm working with Dr Sloan."

"I only need a minute," she said, looking desperately at George and then defiantly at Mark.

"Isn't there somewhere you're _supposed_ to be, Stevens?" Mark said.

"I just need to speak to George," she said slightly wildly. "It doesn't seem like you're busy."

Mark looked at George, who had his eyes closed as though trying to act like he wasn't there. "Yeah, well, appearances can be deceptive," he said sardonically.

"George?" she said.

"Later, Iz . . . maybe . . . " he muttered uncomfortably.

She glared at him in disbelief. "Seriously?" she said. "Seriously?! You--"

"Why don't we all try pretending we're at work?" Mark interrupted her.

She hesitated for a moment, made a disgusted sound, and walked angrily away.

"Her as well?" Mark said, mingling disbelief, distaste and something that sounded like admiration. "Is it that you're . . . younger?"

"I'm not . . . she's not . . ." George stammered.

"Right, she just wanted you to look at an x-ray?" Mark suggested, smirking.

George sighed and changed the subject. "Dr Sloan, what are we supposed to be working on?"

Mark looked embarrassed, something that George thought he had never seen before. "Nothing," he said. "Just . . ." he sighed. "I have to sign off my patients." He indicated the pile of charts. "And, some of them, I'll probably have to talk to for a while." He paused. "I don't really need an intern. Your wife probably sent you because the Chief told her to."

As he didn't understand, George said nothing.

"I . . . I'm taking medical leave." Mark sounded shaky. In fact, George thought he was actually trembling and he didn't know what to say.

"I have cancer," Mark said, looking down at the floor.

"God," George said. "I had no idea. I'm . . . sorry . . . really." And he actually was because, although he didn't like Mark, it would be too callous not to be. "My dad had cancer," he ventured.

"Yeah?" said Mark, who never really paid attention to hospital gossip that didn't involve sex or career progression. "What happened to him?'

"He . . . died," said George hesitantly, conscious of the poor timing.

Mark raised his eyebrows and then started to laugh. "Was it bedside manner that made you fail your internship?" he asked.

Not listening and lost in his own thoughts, George added miserably, "He died . . . and then I got married."

"I'd trade my father for your wife any time," Mark mused, not getting George's point and tactlessly thinking out loud. "Listen, I seriously don't need help this afternoon,' he said. "You want to run along and see if you can find something to cut?"

"Sure," George said, still preoccupied, and walked away.

* * *

When Mark got out of the elevator on the ground floor that evening, Meredith was sitting waiting for him.

"Hey," she said and smiled.

"Hey. You waiting for Derek?"

"No . . . you," she said. "I knew you were here and I just wanted to say . . ."

"Hey?" he said, making fun of her.

"Dr Bailey liked that you called her the Nazi," she said. "Although I don't think she would ever say that to you."

"The surgery go okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "Why did you cancel?"

He sighed. "Because I feel like I'm going to throw up and, since last night, it seems like I've got the shakes. Not really desirable qualities in a surgeon, would you say?" He smiled slightly. "I've arranged leave and I'm getting admitted by oncology tomorrow. "

Her eyes widened. "Seriously? You want me to go with you?"

"No . . . I _think_ I can still find my way around the hospital. I'm not quite that far gone, I hope."

"You're right," she said, smiling. "I just thought . . ." She trailed off and gave a small shrug. She wasn't really sure what she'd just thought, why she'd thought it or whether it was something she ought to be thinking at all, and stopping talking seemed like her best option right now.

"Listen," he said. "I'm wasted. I'm going home. Would you mind asking Derek to call me when he has a minute?"

"Sure," she said. "Good luck tomorrow."

"Thanks," he said and then grinned. "So, you're free now, Grey. You don't have to keep signing up for plastics procedures." He winked at her and then turned and left the building.

She sighed. "I'm free," she said to herself. "That's a good thing, right?"


	8. Friday

Chapter 8, Friday

Feelings are so overrated, Mark thought. He was sitting on the couch in his hotel room, not paying attention to the TV he had turned on, drinking bottled water and longing for a scotch. It was 1 am and he couldn't sleep and he felt bad in just about every way he could imagine. He had "committed himself to the process" as Julia Lindstrom had put it. He had stopped drinking; he had stopped doing surgeries; later that day he would have to go to Seattle Grace without the protective mask of surgeon to hide behind. He had told O'Malley about the cancer and assumed that pretty much the whole hospital now knew. He had taken the first step in moving on from Addison . . . well, he was trying. So he was "taking a positive attitude." Wasn't that the phrase people used when you had cancer? And yet, he had felt so much better when he had taken a negative one.

Feeling one thing, anything, seemed to make everything else seem more raw and painful. When he was working, or drunk, or exhausted from surgeries, or fucking some nurse whose name he would forget before he'd come, he had been able to ignore to some degree the pain and nausea he was experiencing. Now it was just starkly present. And, when he had been obsessing about Addison or kidding himself that he could do fine without her, he had been kind of emotionally numb. Now, he felt hollow and empty and like nothing would ever fill the void.

The telephone rang, startling him, and he answered it cautiously. "Dr Sloan?" said the hotel clerk. "I have a Dr Shepherd for you. Is it all right to send him up?"

Now? he thought irritably. Friendship was overrated as well. "Sure. Send him up," he said, hung up the phone and turned off the TV.

After a few minutes there was a knock at the door. He answered it, groaning. "Did you ever hear of the phone?" he asked, blocking the doorway. "I asked Grey to have you call me, not move in."

"I had an emergency subarachnoid hemorrhage -- a fatal emergency subarachnoid hemorrhage, as it turned out," Derek sighed. "I only just finished. I thought I'd see you before . . . Meredith said you were getting admitted tomorrow . . . well, today, I guess."

"I suppose you want to come in?"

"That was the general idea."

Mark stood back from the door wearily to let him in and closed it behind him.

Derek yawned and ran his hands over his face. "You have anything to drink?" he asked, looking around.

"Water."

"Anything stronger?" he laughed.

"Liquor cabinet," Mark said, indicating the corner of the room. "Help yourself."

"You want one?" Derek asked.

Remind me why I wanted to be friends with you again? Mark thought. But said "No. I stopped drinking today?"

"Really?! That's good! Do you mind me . . .?"

"Yeah . . . obviously," Mark said snarkily. "But as you've poured it now you might as well drink it."

Derek brought his drink over to the couch and sat down. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's late. I lost track of time because of the surgery. You probably want to sleep."

"I _can't_ sleep," Mark sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm just in a crappy mood. I'm 'being positive,'" he said dryly.

Derek laughed. "In your own inimitable way!" he said and raised his glass.

"Listen," Mark began uncertainly. "What I wanted you to call me about was . . . I don't know how to ask you this, really, but I'd like to get a health care proxy drawn up that names you as the contact for any. . . you know . . . decisions. I just don't want anyone from my family involved in this." He paused. "I know it's a little last minute. We could maybe get a hospital lawyer to do it? I kind of saved their asses the other day. They might think they owe me."

Derek was silent for a moment. He had known Mark long enough not to argue about his family and he was moved that he still trusted him to this extent. "I can do that," he said simply. "You know you're not going to need it though?"

Mark laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, right. Because, as we both know, hospital patients don't die."

"Because _you're_ not going to die," Derek said. "You're going to be fine."

"That what you told the subarachnoid hemorrhage?" Mark said.

"No . . ." Derek said. "He was unconscious!" He laughed slightly and then said, "Are you okay about going in? Is there anything you need?"

After a pause, Mark said. "I don't know. This week has moved too fast. I was in this nice, bummed-out comfort zone and then you and Julia Lindstrom shook it all up. I'm not equipped for this. I have no coping mechanisms that fit this situation. It's all new and seriously fucking scary. So, no . . . I'm not okay with it. But I guess it's the right thing to do. " He sighed. "Maybe you could visit me, so that I have someone to bitch at?"

"You don't have to ask that," said Derek softly.

"And take Grey out for dinner or . . . do something nice for her in bed, or -- "

Derek raised his eyebrows.

"What?' Mark asked and then realized. "Sorry. Inappropriate, right?" He paused. "It's just that she's been really cool about all this and she looks like she could use . . . " he trailed off and shrugged.

Derek didn't respond, but sighed a little despondently.

"You guys are okay, aren't you? I thought, since you made up with me, she'd be all over you."

"She was . . ." Derek said "the first night. But Meredith's . . . complicated. Her moods change and, last night, she was . . . preoccupied. Tonight, the only time I spoke to her was when she gave me your message so, really, I have no idea." He shrugged a little disconsolately.

Mark assessed him. "So, did you ask her what was wrong? Or did you just schedule an extra surgery? "

Derek stared at him. "Please don't assume that there's a similarity between Addison and Meredith," he said stiffly.

"I'm assuming that there might be a similarity between you _then_ and you _now_. You already lost one great woman. Maybe you should try not to lose another one."

"I hardly 'lost' Addison," Derek said coldly. "And really, I'd prefer not to take advice from _you_ about this. I'm here for you. But . . ." he shook his head, not wanting the conversation to deteriorate into a fight, and took a deep breath. "Anyway," he teased wryly. "I'd heard you called Meredith a 'slutty intern'."

Mark looked embarrassed. "Yeah, well, that was before I got to know her," he said and stood up. "Go home, Shepherd. Have dirty sex with your girlfriend and tell her you love her." He walked towards the door and then opened it, indicating the way out.

As he left, Derek said, "Talking to you about Addison still makes me . . . uncomfortable." He hesitated. "You know, in spite of that, that we're good, don't you?"

Mark nodded. "Thank you," he said and, after a brief pause, added, "Go home, would you?" unable to deal with and trying to conceal the feelings that were coursing through him.

* * *

By 2:30, Mark was still awake and unenthusiastically watching _NCIS _reruns. There was a soft knock at the door.

When he opened it, he found Callie standing outside; something that, on most nights, he would have welcomed, but tonight was too exhausted and demoralized for.

"Hi," she said in an exaggerated whisper. "How are you doing?"

"Did somebody die?" he asked, mimicking her hushed tone.

"Hallway . . . " she explained. "Late . . . Can I come in?"

"No," he said.

"Why the hell not?"

"Because, right now, I trust myself with you and that's incredibly distressing," he said.

"Two minutes!" she hissed. "I don't want to stand out here and I need to talk to you. And I wouldn't let you touch me anyway."

Grudgingly, he stood aside and let her in.

"Well?" he said.

"Can I have a drink?" she said in her normal voice, walking towards the liquor cabinet.

"No."

"You want one?" she asked, ignoring him and pouring one anyway.

"No," he sighed.

"So . . ." she took her drink over to the bed and sprawled on it. "Addison called me this morning, yelling about something that I finally worked out was something you said to her --"

A sudden spasm of pain went through him and, involuntarily, he half sat, half crumpled on the couch and closed his eyes. He wrapped his arms around himself and leaned slightly forward, attempting to suppress the horrible burning feeling. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I'll . . . ahh, shit!"

She swallowed. "And George said you told him you have cancer. . . " she said. "And, until just now, I thought he was crazy!" She breathed in to calm herself. "God, Mark!" she said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The pain diminished slightly and he straightened up, ran his hand over his face and sighed. "Because I didn't want you to know," he said in a strained voice. "It makes me feel less of a . . . manwhore . . . " he made an expression that she thought would probably have been a smirk if he hadn't felt like crap "and I was still living in hope that you would let me fuck you again."

"I'm married, Mark," she said softly. "That isn't going to happen."

He shrugged. "A guy's got to try, though, right?" He was torn between telling her about O'Malley and Stevens and not wanting to hurt her. He knew that his judgments about what was the right thing to do were often not appreciated by other people and, not having the energy to decide in this case, said nothing.

"Wow! Addison must _really_ hate you . . . or she doesn't know . . ." she said.

He really didn't want to know that spilling some of his deepest emotions to Addison had just had the effect of pissing her off. In fact, he didn't want to know her reaction at all. "Can we not talk about that?" he said. "And, she doesn't know. I didn't want _her_ to know either. It would mean a lot to me if you could manage not to tell her."

She considered. "I can do that," she said. "But, you know, George probably told more people than just me. And he was in kind of a bizarre mood this afternoon. One way or another she's going to find out."

"Well, maybe I'll be dead--" with a great effort of will he corrected himself and made himself mean it "I'll be doing better by then, and I'll know how to talk to her about it."

Callie looked at him sideways and started to play with her hair.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing . . ." she said, but continued as before.

"Seriously," he said. "You're acting strange. It's . . . disturbing."

"Well. . ." she said. "This probably isn't the right time to say this, and I don't mean that I want to do anything, but . . ." she paused.

"What?" he asked again.

"It's just that you're so fucking hot when you're not being all . . . McSteamy," she said.

He looked at her incredulously. "You're . . . confusing," he sighed, unable to think of anything more coherent.

She ignored him and considered. "I wonder if that's why Grey has a thing for you . . . because you don't hit on her?" She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"Huh?" he said. He had no idea what she was talking about.

"You know . . . Grey . . . anorexic, vague, tortured sex life . . . the woman you've been working with nearly every day for like the last four weeks, despite my attempts to occasionally assign her someplace else?"

"Don't be a bitch," he said. "She eats, I've seen her; and she's pretty focused if you give her something challenging to do; and everyone in the goddamn hospital has a tortured sex life, including--" he had been about to say 'you', but he didn't want to go there. "And she doesn't have a 'thing' for me, for god's sake. She's obviously smitten with Derek."

"Ooh . . . now you're defending her?! Wow, I didn't know it was mutual. Did you ever hear of deja-vu?" she smirked.

He really didn't want to discuss this. "You know," he suggested sarcastically, trying to change the subject, "I could be wrong, Torres, but I'm not certain that it's normal, when you visit someone who's sick, to steal their liquor, act like a cock-tease and trash their friends. Maybe that's just me, but . . .?"

"You're an ass," she laughed. "And she _does_ have a thing for you. Even Yang thinks so."

"Well, if you'd said that in the first place . . ." he joked. "Don't you think it's time you went back to your stallion of a husband and left me alone to be depressed?" He stood up and walked towards the door.

"Okay," she shrugged, getting up off the bed.

Mark opened the door for her and, as she stepped through, Callie turned and said. "Seriously, though. Good luck with--"

"Thank you," he said and kissed her gently on the forehead.

She inhaled. "So very hot without the McSteamy thing," she murmured and walked away smiling.

Mark decided to take the view that Callie was crazy. Life would be easier that way and it wouldn't carry the risk of losing two of his not very many friends in one painfully reminiscent and unrecoverable fight. The problem was, though, now that she had raised the subject, he couldn't stop himself from thinking about Grey . . . Meredith, and what it might be like to--

"Seriously, Sloan," he warned himself. "Don't fucking go there. That really would be self-destructive."

* * *

"Meredith." Derek climbed into bed next to her and whispered softly in her ear to wake her up.

"Hmmm?" she said.

"Wake up, Mer," he said gently.

She half opened her eyes. "What time is it?" she asked groggily.

He didn't answer her, but said, "Meredith. I'm sorry if sometimes I seem a little distant."

She opened her eyes a little more and tried to make him out in the semi-darkness.

"And if sometimes I act like I find you. . . our relationship. . . a little bit too much work."

She raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything.

"But, I love you." he said. "I love you and I'm yours and I wanted to make sure that you know that."

She still couldn't see him really well, but she knew he had that McDreamy look on his face, the one that always made her melt. And yet, inexplicably, she wasn't melting.

"I love you too," she said and knew that he was smiling at her as she said that.

"So, you want to have a little dirty sex?" he teased her.

She hesitated and then said, feigning sleepiness, "Maybe tomorrow. I'm really, really tired." She turned away from him, yawned and pretended to fall straight back asleep and, as she did so, she felt her heart sink.


	9. One Week Later

Chapter 9, One Week Later

"_You know. . ." she drawled, waving her plain crystal gin glass and taking a drag of her cigarette._

H_e didn't know and he didn't want to. She had been normal for a while -- not kind or friendly or playful or any of the things other people's mothers seemed to be -- but not scary and cruel; not trying to make him feel bad and seeming to enjoy it; but . . . normal. So, when he had gotten an 'A' for some science thing, he had thought she might be -- well, pleased might be pushing it -- but, maybe, interested. She wasn't. She was drinking and she was wearing that expression that meant she was looking for someone to screw with, and the grade was exactly the entry point she needed._

"Y_our father was always pretty good at science." She regarded him with the bored, disappointed coldness that she always airily dismissed as 'only joking -- really, Mark, you're too sensitive'. "Are you aiming to be like him in other ways, too?" She raised her eyebrows, bitchily challenging him. And, really, it wasn't like she'd said anything, but the way she said it made him flinch. When she'd had a little more to drink she would start to tell him, yet again, what a great life she'd had before she met his father; how she'd been this gorgeous, talented, New York debutante; how every man had wanted her; how she'd tied herself to a 'good marriage' that her parents demanded; and how, just when she'd realized how great a mistake she'd made, she'd gotten pregnant with him. When she was really drunk, she would go off the deep end as far as propriety went, and tell him that, on the night he was conceived, the sex wasn't even any good. He knew all this, by heart, by the time he was ten. By the time he was twelve, he even understood most of it. What he didn't understand was why he had to take the blame for it all._

"Mark?" a woman's voice roused him, softer and more straightforward than his mother's voice in the medication-induced memory. He wished they wouldn't give him that stuff. He'd almost rather endure the stomach pain than deal with the memories it brought up.

He squinted painfully at her, which was about as much as he could manage without causing explosions to go off in his head that made his already relentless headache even worse.

"Hey," Julia said, smiling at him. "I'm just going to remove the IV," she said. "This session's over, you'll probably be happy to know."

He thought he shrugged in response, but wasn't entirely sure that his body co-operated. Anyway, he didn't really have an opinion . . . on anything. Well, just that he wanted to stop hurting, and throwing up and seeing four of everything on the rare occasions he could bear to open his eyes.

"So, I have some good news," she said. She wasn't, as it turned out, a bitch, or obnoxious, but she _was_ unremittingly upbeat. "Your tests came back and there's a significant rise in your NK cell count."

"Huh?" he said, having no idea what she was talking about.

"Natural killer cells," she said. "They eliminate metastatic tumor cells. That's a good thing, " she said encouragingly, when he didn't respond. "It's a sign that the immunotherapy is working."

"Yeah?" he said. "Does that mean you're going to stop torturing me?" He was intending to joke with her, but the concerned look on her face suggested that this had misfired.

"Well, I'm giving you a break," she said. "In a few hours you should feel a little less awful." She paused. "And Derek Shepherd's here. You want to see him?"

"If I have to," he said. He had started shaking again. "Sorry . . . yeah, sure. Just tell him not to expect much," he said and retreated under the blankets, completely submerging himself.

After a few minutes, he heard Derek's voice. "You want to come out from under there?"

"No," he said.

"My surgery was canceled," Derek said. "I thought I could maybe keep you company for a while."

"Yeah?" he responded, but said nothing else. This was not his life right now -- surgeries; having a choice about how you spent your time; not being in pain. It was like talking to someone from another planet.

"So how are you feeling?"

"You seriously don't want to know," he muttered. "You know, they give me some shit for the pain that makes me remember stuff. I keep . . . dreaming, I guess . . . about my mother." He didn't say that some of the induced memories also involved Addison. "She was such a bitch," he said.

"Yeah," Derek agreed, thinking that this was something of an understatement. "She was."

After a pause, Mark asked "You staying?"

"Not if you don't want me to . . ."

"No . . ." He had enough difficulty explaining his feelings anyway. Expressing, now, how much he needed Derek to stay, while at the same time wishing he could be left alone was beyond him. "Stay," he sighed.

Derek sat down on the chair next to the bed. "I'll just sit here for a while," he said. "Let me know if you want anything. Or when you've had enough of me." Trying to make it clear that he had no expectations, Derek pulled a medical journal out of his bag and began leafing through it, eventually settling on an article about the surgical treatment of hyperhydrosis.

"What's that?" When he looked up, he found that Mark had emerged from the blankets and was looking at him through partially closed eyes and indicating the journal.

"Back issue of the AANS journal."

"Huh?"

"American Association of Neurological Surgeons."

Mark lifted the blankets back over his head. "You want to read that to me?"

Derek raised his eyebrows, "The AANS journal?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"If you say so. Anything in particular?"

"Anything . . . whatever you want . . . start at the beginning," he said, his voice becoming more indistinct as he continued. "And stop asking questions. It hurts to talk."

* * *

For a week, Meredith had tried. She had begun trying the morning after Derek came to bed and said he loved her. She tried to be sexy, and she tried to be loving, and she tried to concentrate on what was happening around her instead of what was happening in her head. She worked on different surgeries, mostly with Derek –- who really was brilliant and kind to the patients and pulled medical rabbits out of hats that other surgeons probably wouldn't even have noticed, and Dr Bailey –- who she found oddly comforting. She tried to be interested in the interns, which was very hard, what with the George thing and her sister. She went to Joe's with Cristina, and tried to be . . . well, drunk. Seriously, she couldn't even do this any more without trying. And she was succeeding; the trying was paying off; she was starting to feel normal . . . at least, she was trying to.

When Derek came back from visiting Mark, she tried to react like her interest was only because she was Derek's girlfriend and she wanted to be supportive. She even tried to actually feel this. And when Derek told her about the side effects and the pain and the heart-breaking things that Mark said, she tried not to shake and if she couldn't stop herself, she said she was cold, and Derek believed her.

But, now a week had elapsed, and . . . she _couldn't . . ._ it was too hard. So she had taken refuge in the locker room, where she sat, almost frozen in one position, trying not to have a panic attack, until Callie Torres found her.

"So, Grey!" Callie sat down next to her on the bench. "We working today, or . . .?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I . . ." Meredith was lost for words.

Focused, huh, Mark? Callie thought. Only when _you're_ around, I guess.

"You been to see Mark? I was wondering how he's doing."

"I . . ." Meredith made herself breathe. "Derek has. He's having really hard time with the therapy, apparently. But no . . . I haven't. I haven't really had . . . much time," she said, thinking that this was a pathetic excuse that Callie wouldn't buy, because she_ knew_ that Callie knew something.

Callie nodded, a little skeptically. "You think you might feel a little better if you did?" she asked meaningfully. "Because you had a pretty close . . ." How should she put this without being too blatant? "Uh . . . working relationship with him recently."

Meredith nodded at her in an inconclusive, dazed way, which, despite the fact that she thought it was kind of typical, made Callie feel sorry for her.

"Listen," Callie said. "It looked as though they could use another doctor in the clinic when I went by just now. You want to help out in there for a couple of hours?"

'Sure," Meredith said. "That would be . . . fine." She got up, fragilely, and moved towards to the door.

"Seriously," Callie said, unsure why she was pushing this. "Go see him. I think he'd like it."

* * *

The clinic turned out to be very busy and, for over four hours, she worked on patients, whose various medical emergencies absorbed her attention and made her feel a little less out of control. But, by the time all that was left to do was stand and watch George suture a little girl's not very badly hurt arm, her anxiety and hopelessness were threatening to take over again.

"George," she said. "Is it okay if I leave you here for a while? You can page me if you need anything."

"'S fine, Mer," he said. 'There's nothing much to do here now, anyway."

"Okay. . ." she said, but didn't leave.

"So . . . are you leaving?" he asked, and he and the patient both looked at her questioningly.

"I am," she said, indecisively. "I'm leaving right now."

"So go! You're making my patient nervous -- well, me actually, _she_ seems fine," he said, looking doubtfully at the little girl, who was scowling at him.

And so, that was how she found herself in the elevator, on her way up to oncology. Because she made George nervous; because she couldn't try anymore; and because, really, she didn't have anywhere else to go where she wouldn't feel like she was losing her mind.

Really, she assumed, they wouldn't let her in his room. And then she could go back to the clinic, or go to Joe's, or go home and lock herself in her room and . . . but of course they did. It was fine. It was great that he had another visitor. He was sleeping and she should try not to wake him, but they were sure he'd love to see her if he did.

So now, she was sitting in a chair, next to his bed, while he slept, restlessly, talking in his sleep about something incoherent that she couldn't understand. And, she sat there and hoped her pager would go off and give her an excuse to leave, while at the same time hoping beyond everything that it wouldn't. And she still tried. But now she was trying not to notice how much she wished he would wake up and take her in his arms and hold her.

_When Addison told him about the abortion, first of all . . . well, it figured, because, really, who had he been kidding that she would want to have his baby? He was just someone who was pretty enough to fuck when the person you loved lost interest, right? Then, just for a moment, he'd wanted to die.  
_

_She never got that. She never got how devastated she made him feel. She was always too busy telling him how devastated she felt -- that Derek hated her; that he cheated –- yeah, for ten deluded minutes in an on-call room he felt like someone wanted him and that he wasn't a constant disappointment; that she had killed the baby she'd always wanted, because she didn't want it any more, because it had the wrong father. Him._

_Well, what had he expected? He was used to being the wrong person. Hey, he'd been doing it all his life._

_Maybe he deserved it, though? Because, the time she called him from Seattle . . . now, that was the time to say 'no'. That he wouldn't fly 2,500 miles for a desperate, traumatized fuck that had nothing to do with him. That he wouldn't sell his practice and sub-let his condo and live in a goddamn hotel, where she could ignore him until she got depressed again. That he wouldn't again, endlessly, shamelessly hope to be loved, so that he could be demolished, one more time, by the person he had loved with his entire being._

He groaned in his sleep and Meredith thought she heard him say 'Addison' and, at this, realized that she had no right to be here. It was too voyeuristic, sitting here watching his private pain. She was nobody to him; she was his best friend's girlfriend; a junior resident who he'd let assist him on surgeries and been kind enough to say had done a good job. She was nobody and she had no right to be here and she should just leave--

"Meredith?' he said. He had opened his eyes and was looking at her, as though trying to figure out who she was.

She didn't think she'd ever heard him call her anything but 'Grey.'

"I forget . . . was there some reason that I shouldn't see you?" he asked, as though it was really something that he wanted help understanding.

She had started shaking. "Lots." she said. "I should go."

"No," he shook his head groggily. "Please . . . please stay," he said and, slowly and uncertainly, he reached out his hand.

She couldn't move. She sat and looked at him and tried to breathe and she tried to stop herself from responding.

'Please?" he said again and she was powerless to do anything now but stay with him.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he replied.

She moved the chair closer to him and took his hand. When she felt his warmth, her shaking got worse and she felt tears forming in her eyes.

"Hey," he said again. "Don't cry. This is a good thing, right?" He smiled.

She honestly wasn't sure that he knew what he was doing. There was something removed and disoriented about him that made her think that he wasn't quite aware of what was transpiring here and that maybe she, as the person who did know, should stop. She wasn't even sure that he really knew who she was. And yet, at the same time, it seemed as though he somehow knew her better than anyone ever had before, and this made her feel whole.

Quietly, not wanting to disturb . . . anything, she said, "It is. It _is_ a good thing." And she stayed and held his hand as he fell asleep again, this time peacefully, and for the first time in a week -- or maybe much longer -- she didn't need to try.


	10. Next Morning

Chapter 10, Next Morning

Meredith was making breakfast when Cristina came into the kitchen. Not gourmet, Burke-type breakfast, admittedly, but coffee and toast and . . . was that some kind of fruit?

"Are you okay?" Cristina asked, worried by her friend's uncharacteristic domesticity.

"I'm great!" Meredith smiled at her and handed her a cup of coffee.

Cristina took it and sighed. "So, when you came here last night and said you needed a place to crash, I take that meant you'd finally lost it?"

"No," Meredith was still smiling, and now buttering toast. "I just needed some . . . space from Derek."

"Because . . .?"

"Because . . ." she said. "I had a good day and I wanted some . . . space."

Cristina narrowed her eyes. "Meredith, I know you, so I know you're weird, and I just about get how spending the morning freaking out and the afternoon with George in the clinic might constitute a 'good day.' But I think most people would have a hard time understanding that."

"Not _that . . ._" Meredith said. "Anyway, how come you always know so much about how I spend my day?"

"Because you're obvious" Cristina stated matter-of-factly and shrugged. She narrowed her eyes. "You had sex, didn't you? Between leaving the hospital and coming here. That's why you want 'space' from Shepherd."

"I did not have sex!" Meredith said. "I just had a . . . good day." She handed Cristina a piece of toast. "Eat your breakfast," she said. "We'll be late for work, and I want to cut something!"

* * *

You should get a house, Mark thought. A person can't live in a hotel, for god's sake.

When he'd woken up that morning, he felt . . . different . . . better. So, when the nurse came in, he had refused the delirium-inducing painkillers. He could more or less deal with the pain and, anyway, he'd had enough of being confronted with his past.

Which reminded him . . .

You're an ass! he thought. She never asked you to move here –- in fact, she asked you _not _to. She never asked you for anything except friendship and a little sex -- the cross-country flight he would overlook in the spirit of not being an ass, and the sex _had_ been good. Everything else came from you. You can't _make_ somebody love you.

He would have to call her and say something . . . apologetic. The abortion would always be difficult. But, as far as he could, he guessed he got why she'd done it. Certainly, she had reasons outside of his self-absorbed fixation that she was confirming what his mother had made him feel about himself. God, I'm sorry, Add . . . at least I let you go, right?

And dying wasn't the easy option, it was a crappy one. He was going to get well; he was going to go back to work; he was going to fuck . . . hell _make love_ even with someone who he cared about and who cared about him back; and he was going to buy a goddamn house.

"Good morning," Julia Linsdstrom came in, interrupting his thoughts.

"Hey," he said, smiling and sitting up.

She raised her eyebrows. "You're in a good mood this morning," she said.

"Nothing that a few hours immunotherapy can't screw up, right?" he joked.

"Wow! Obviously you should get your girlfriend to visit more often."

He looked at her incredulously. "Excuse me?" he said, and for a moment thought that they might have medicated him anyway.

"Your girlfriend . . . " she said. "The woman that was here yesterday evening."

He shook his head. "Not following . . ." he said.

She was becoming a little worried. "The nurses told me -- you're kind of a favorite with them, so they were happy for you -- that a woman visited you yesterday, and sat with you, and you talked, and she held your hand and then you fell asleep. They said it was cute!" She smiled.

Obviously one of us is crazy, he thought. "What's this woman supposed to have looked like?"

"Hang on," she said. "I'll check with a nurse." She turned to leave and almost collided with Derek, on his way in.

"Good morning," he said. "I brought more neurosurgery journals."

"That's great," Mark said, distractedly, beginning to have half-formed memories of holding someone's hand and feeling . . . wanted.

Julia came back into the room, while Derek searched in his bag for the journals, his back to Mark. "Slender, dark blonde, very pretty and apparently she seemed agitated," she said, giving Mark just enough time to shake his head at her and indicate Derek.

Her eyes questioned him, but she seemed to get that she shouldn't say anything else.

"That sounds like Meredith!" Derek said, joking.

Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Mark thought and groaned inwardly.


	11. Two Weeks Later

Chapter 11, Two Weeks Later

It was two weeks since he'd been admitted to oncology, one day before he would be discharged, and four days since he'd been a callous jerk to Meredith Grey and blown her off because he couldn't tell Derek that he was in love with her.

It was pretty easy really. He'd rejected countless no-longer-wanted women and he had all the lines off by heart. The only difference was that, when he said them to her, he had ripped out another piece of his heart with each one. And by the look on her face, he had ripped out pieces of hers at the same time.

"What was it you said about not being an ass?" he thought. Because this had to be the worst thing he'd ever done. And the tragic part was that he'd done it to do the right thing. Evidently, all those people who thought his judgment sucked were right.

The day after he'd ripped her heart out, Derek came up to his room and bitched about her.

_"Meredith is impossible," he said. "Her moods are . . . impossible. She spends half her time at Yang's. And, in the hospital, she's--"_

_"Impossible?" Mark supplied wearily._

Because that was the way the conversations went. Derek loved her but he didn't get her. To him, she was work. To Mark, she was salvation. But Derek had her first. And he wasn't going to make the same mistake as last time and turn his life back into the mess it had been for the past year. Derek was his family, the only family that he had. He had to remind himself of that every time he thought about her.

Just at the end of his unfeeling little speech about how she'd "misunderstood him" and how "there was nothing between them" and all the other stale clichés that had no place in any conversation between him and her, she had said,

_"I don't feel safe without you. I wish I didn't know that because I was doing okay before I did. But, now that I do . . . please don't leave me alone."_

And his heart nearly stopped, because he knew exactly what she meant. It was how he felt with her. But he pretended he didn't understand, and when she realized that she wasn't going to get through to him, she'd said, unsteadily at first but getting stronger as she went on,

_"I . . . I thought there was . . . that we were . . . but clearly, I was wrong. Clearly, I'm wrong about a lot of things lately. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to Joe's. I have an appointment with a bottle of tequila."_

And this made him love her even more -- that she told him to go fuck himself like this. He wasn't sure that he would have been able to do this and he admired her for it. He thought, if their roles had been reversed, he might just have broken down and cried.

Tomorrow he was getting discharged. The therapy was going okay and Julia was cautiously hopeful about proceeding to the next phase. So he had to make good on what he'd promised himself the morning after Meredith had penetrated his pain and made him feel wanted and loved. Even though he was miserable, he couldn't blame anybody, because this time it was because of a choice he had made. He would go back to work -- the only thing he didn't routinely screw up, he believed he had told Derek, and wasn't that too fucking true? He would get a house -- because he couldn't live in a hotel anymore, and not just because there were only so many memories of what you'd fucked up you could live with without going crazy. But, when he'd said that he wanted to make love with someone that he cared about and who cared about him back . . . well, that had been her and that was never going to happen now. "God, Derek, I hope you appreciate what you have this time!" he thought.

* * *

_Four days earlier_

"What are you doing, Mer?" Cristina asked. Alex had fetched her from the hospital, where she had been finishing up with her last patient of the day, when he couldn't do anything to help Meredith or stop her from drinking herself into oblivion.

When Meredith saw her, her face crumpled and she dissolved into tears. "He doesn't want me," she wailed.

"Shepherd?" said Cristina.

"No," said Meredith, shaking her head and her sobbing getting worse.

Cristina raised her eyebrows. "Not Shepherd?"

"No . . . Mark . . . he doesn't want me. And I can't . . . I can't. . ." She gave up trying to express herself and looked hopelessly at Cristina.

Cristina sat down on the barstool next to her and Meredith leaned her head on her shoulder. "You can come back with me again tonight, if you want to," she said, and Meredith nodded. "But, Mer, you can't keep letting men destroy you like this. Not your father, not Shepherd and not . . . seriously, not . . . I mean, how could you let yourself . . .?" She finished off the sentence with a disgusted snort. She wanted to be supportive but she was pissed at the situation. "Who's it going to be next time . . . Alex?"

"I'm right here, Yang!" he said.

"Shut up!" said Cristina. "You have the wrong genitalia to participate in this conversation."

Meredith sniffed loudly and swallowed. "There's not going to be a next time," she said. "There _is_ no next time. That was . . . it was . . . that was how it's meant to be."

Cristina snorted again. It seemed like the most appropriate response right now. "Well, no doubt he's good in bed!" she said acerbically. "He's had enough practice at it--"

"No," Meredith interrupted her. "Not that. I kept telling you . . . I didn't sleep with him." She paused and then said, softly "I didn't have to . . . to know." She looked desperately at Cristina. "Can we go back to your place now?" she asked.


	12. Three Weeks Later

Chapter 12, Three Weeks Later

On Monday, Mark called a real estate agent. The conversation didn't go all that well at first, because he didn't know what kind of house he wanted, or what area he wanted to live in or what his price range was or any of the answers to any of the questions she asked him. He went along with this because domineering women brought out his compliant side and, anyway, he had no idea what he was doing. But, in the end, he had stopped her and made it clear that if she just found him a house he liked he would buy it for cash, at which point, her attitude had changed. Perhaps this wasn't what everybody would understand by "getting a house," but it was all he was capable of right now.

On Tuesday, he went for his first treatment in the outpatient phase of the therapy. Julia Lindstrom had implied in her typically buoyant way that this was the easy part and, naively, he had believed her. Perhaps she thought, as another doctor, he understood more than he did. But he was a plastic surgeon and what the hell did he know about immunotherapy? When he had to pull over on the way home to throw up, he realized that "the easy part" was the sort of pleasant euphemism that he was always getting criticized for not using with patients.

He had spent most of that evening sitting on the bathroom floor, wrapped in the comforter from the bed, freezing cold, nauseated and, every so often, vomiting. Maybe she'd meant that it was "easy" because he wasn't shaking anymore and didn't have a mind-obliterating headache. But, his stomach hurt and he was miserable and -- he stopped himself going any further because, well, Derek was his family and he wasn't going to think about her.

Derek, who he wasn't even sure he wanted to talk to right now anyway, was in New York that week at a medical conference. When, on Wednesday evening, after his second treatment, he had called Callie's room -- because he was lonely and scared that his depression would take over again -- O'Malley had answered, abruptly, and he could hear her yelling almost insanely in the background and had hung up without speaking. For a second, because he was desperate, he had thought about calling Addison. But she wasn't the one person he needed any more and it wouldn't be fair to use her as substitute. Ironic maybe, he thought, with a glimmer of humor, but not fair.

On Thursday, he dragged himself from his hotel room to the hospital for the final treatment of that week. He leaned against the wall as he waited for the elevator and closed his eyes.

"Dr Sloan?" he heard Miranda Bailey's voice and opened his eyes blearily. She looked uncomfortable, which was unusual and faintly amusing. "I . . ."

"Yeah?"

"I wanted to thank you for that surgery. The mastectomy."

He shrugged. "Somebody had to do it."

She swallowed awkwardly, clearly not wanting to have this conversation but feeling obligated to. "It wasn't just the surgery," she said. "It was what you said about me being the Nazi. I needed to hear that."

He shrugged. "People talk crap about you long enough, you start to believe it. Sometimes it helps if . . ." that was about as long a sentence as he could put together and he trailed off.

She nodded stiffly. "By the way," she said. "I was sorry to hear--" but the elevator arrived, probably as much of a relief to her as it was to him.

"Weren't we just going up?" Yang's indignant voice came from inside as the doors opened. "Seriously, it would be quicker to use the stairs."

"But there wouldn't be so much opportunity for--" Meredith stopped abruptly and stared at him, frozen.

His heart started pounding but he nevertheless summoned the wherewithal to say "Hey," and sound more or less like himself, as he and Bailey entered the elevator.

"Dr Sloan," Meredith replied coldly and Yang glared at him. Maybe the outpatient therapy _was_ the easy part, he thought, at least by comparison with the rest of his so-called life.

* * *

The night before Derek left for New York, he and Meredith had sex. That was all she had to say about it. They had sex. She used to have such a lot of adjectives and verbs and feelings and sensations. Now, they just had sex.

When he left, she kissed him and said she loved him and that she would miss him. But it wasn't true. She didn't really feel _anything_. That was her thing now. Not feeling. It seemed to work well for other people, so she was giving it a try. She didn't even feel bad about it. Probably, one day, she'd love Derek again. She had loved him so much once. And, after all, he was still McDreamy, she thought emotionlessly.

Not feeling anything was fairly easy during work. There were all the surgeries she signed up for. There were the interns. There were other people's shifts that she covered without wanting them to return the favor. Not feeling was even useful. People commented that she was very focused. Alex had even gotten sarcastic with her one day when they were discussing a patient's treatment and said 'Yes, ma'am, Dr Bailey, anything you say" which she thought was a good sign that she was getting almost as good at not feeling as the person she'd learned it from. Well, she'd annoyed Alex by acting like an ass -- maybe she'd get him to bring her coffee next.

The problem came when she was not at work. Then feeling nothing took some maintaining; with tequila if she had to be with other people; and with crying until she was numb when she was by herself. She still spent time with Cristina, but something was off between them. Cristina had been her person the night she'd come to Joe's to rescue her, but the whole situation irritated her and sometimes she let it show. She also disapproved of Meredith staying with Derek when she didn't really want him; partly because she thought it was pathetic, and partly because she thought it was unfair. But Meredith refused to feel anything about this. Her life was pathetic and unfair and she needed to be with someone, even if it wasn't the person that she wanted. Correction -- that she _had_ wanted. Because of all the things that she felt nothing about, this was the one she was the most proud of.

Then, on Thursday, after lunch, which she had spent sitting outside the hospital in the un-Seattle-like sun with Cristina, the door of the malfunctioning elevator had opened back on the floor they'd started at and Mark was there. He looked terrible and all her instincts made her heart go out to him, especially when he said "Hey" in that defeated way. But she got over it and pulled herself together and said "Dr Sloan" with as much non-feeling as she could manage, which wasn't very easy considering she could hardly breathe. She wished she could do something to make Cristina stop glaring at him, because she could see that he didn't need that kind of thing. But there was no way to do this and maintain the illusion that she didn't feel anything. Because she didn't . . . seriously . . . and now she had to work.

* * *

"Dr Sloan!" Please God no! Mark thought, when he heard Richard Webber's voice behind him as he was leaving the building after his appointment, but turned to face the Chief anyway.

"Sir?" he said sardonically. "Something I can do for you?"

"I need a favor," he said. "Mrs Schonfeld . . . the wife of a board member, is scheduled for a face lift next week." He looked uncomfortable. "I had forgotten about it entirely until I was going over the timetable with Patricia this morning."

"And . . .?"

"Has your oncologist cleared you for surgeries?" he asked.

"Yeah,' Mark nodded. "Just now …" He had no idea why she'd done this, because as far as he was concerned he was as fucked up as he'd ever been, but he wanted to go back to work and had gone along with it.

"So, do you think you'd be up to doing this next week? I have her down for Tuesday afternoon."

"Fine," he said

"And you're feeling okay?" Richard asked.

"Not right now,' he said honestly. "But it's mostly side effects. I'll be fine for the procedure."

"Well, all right, then," Richard said warmly. "Good to have you back, Mark. I was worried about you for a while there."

"Thank you,' he said, a little surprised, because sometimes he thought Addison's friend and mentor only ever thought about him in terms of the revenue he brought in.

Richard went back up in the elevator. After a few seconds Mark followed him, because he had to find the nearest rest room and throw up.

* * *

Eventually, he got up from the floor of the stall he had locked himself in and opened the door.

"Dude," Alex Karev was taking a piss. He was probably the only other guy he knew who was as unconcerned as himself about who he pissed in front of.

"Karev," he acknowledged him and walked towards the exit as Alex finished up.

"Dude," Alex said again. "I heard you have cancer."

Mark stopped, turned to him and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Alex continued, "I know we haven't always . . . you know. But, listen, I'm really sorry." He looked down at the ground awkwardly. "That's all. I just wanted to say that."

Mark was silent for a moment and then said, quietly, "Thank you." He considered. "You want in on a rhytidectomy next week?"

Alex grinned at him. "Face lift, right?"

"Yup. And a boring and political one, at that." He shrugged. "It's a surgery, right?"

"Are you sure you want me?" Alex asked.

Mark shrugged again. "I know you; I don't have to establish any ground rules. You're . . . competent, I guess . . . except where coffee's concerned." He smiled "Anyway, I learned to fetch that for myself, and even occasionally for people who work with me." He regretted saying this, because all he could think about now was Meredith's incredibly cute confusion over him bringing her coffee.

"But, what about . . . aren't you . . .?" Alex asked, which Mark correctly interpreted as wasn't he still pissed about Addison.

"No, Karev. That was last month's source of agony. I've moved on to fresher wounds since then," he said dryly.

Alex paused and then said "You mean Grey?"

"Yeah," Mark sighed. "But don't ever bring that up again."


	13. Four Weeks Later Tuesday Morning

Chapter 13, Four Weeks Later - Tuesday Morning

It hadn't worked. She couldn't stop feeling. She wasn't constituted for it and she loved him. He had made her feel like she fit in the universe. You couldn't not love someone who made you feel like that, even if it hadn't lasted. She knew he was back at work today and, although the part of her that thought like a surgeon who wanted a different specialty had zero interest in a face lift, she wished she was in on his surgery instead of Alex. Once again she found herself standing in front of the OR board, gazing at what was written on it.

"Hey." Alex startled her out of her thoughts. He pushed her playfully on the arm. He was trying to imply what he wanted to avoid saying out loud -- that he was her friend and that he was there for her and that . . . shit, how did this chick stuff go? . . . that he had something to tell her that would probably make her feel better but was none of his business so he shouldn't probably say it.

"Hey, yourself," she said and smiled at him weakly. Okay . . . so his attempt at subliminal communication had failed and he would have to come out and say what he wanted her to know.

It wasn't just the fact of talking to her about something that he couldn't easily say. It was also that he knew Sloan would kill him for telling her. But he could live with that. A brief ceasefire in the rest room and a cosmetic surgery didn't make a friendship and his loyalty was to her not him.

"You know what you said at Joe's that night?" he said.

"Which night?" she asked.

"When you got wasted on tequila and Yang had to come and get you?" he said, although that wouldn't necessarily narrow it down to one occasion.

"Mmhm," she said and sighed.

He paused. "What you said? It may not have been right."

She laughed slightly. "I think the odds of that being true are pretty good," she said self-deprecatingly.

"No," he said. "Not all the random crap. What you said about Sloan not wanting you. It may not have been right."

She looked at him in that way she had that was half like she expected to be hurt and half like she expected something wonderful to happen.

"Why would you say that?" she asked softly.

He shrugged and grimaced and shifted around but eventually said, "He may have said something. " He looked down at the ground. "I probably should've told you before."

* * *

Cristina was having a crappy morning. She couldn't get in on Hahn's minimally invasive mitral valve repair, Meredith was driving her insane and . . . well, she was having a crappy morning. When the elevator arrived she stormed in, on the verge of muttering to herself like a crazy person. It was only once it started up that she noticed she was sharing it with Mark Sloan, and she lost it.

"What is your problem?" she said.

"Excuse me, Dr Yang?" Mark tried to sound sarcastic, but knew exactly what was coming and dreaded it.

She hit the emergency stop violently. "What the hell is your problem?" she repeated, warming to her subject. "Didn't Shepherd already damage her enough? Now you come along and make her believe that she has someone; that you like her; that she can trust you -- do you know how difficult it is for her to trust? -- and that you care about her. For whatever bizarre reason, you made her happy. You started to undo the damage that Shepherd, that her family, that life did. And then, you just drop her?" She paused and continued in a low voice. "She's my person . . . my sister. She's my family. And you don't get to hurt her like that."

He inhaled harshly and she waited for him to yell at her, to pull rank, to hit something. Instead, he just said, "Then you should understand." He turned to face her and she was astonished to see that there were tears in his eyes. "I can't." His voice sounded tense and strained. "I want to be with her, but I can't. Derek's _my_ family. I can't do that again."

She remained silent.

"You know, life damaged me too," he said. "The only person that's ever really touched that is her. And I have never -- and you can believe this or not, I don't give a fuck -- I have never felt anything like I do for her. But I can't be with her. I can't be that guy again. I wouldn't be worth loving if I could."

Cristina was deeply surprised. After a pause, she said, "Well, I guess I admire your . . . loyalty. But," and she drew upon her own experience to say this, and said it as much to herself as to him "shouldn't you value something that could set you free over something that traps you?"

Without saying anything more, she released the emergency stop. When the elevator reached Mark's floor, he got out without looking at her or speaking, and she went in search of Meredith.

* * *

She found her in the clinic, examining an old man with a nosebleed. "Posterior epistaxis," Cristina said, hardly looking at the man. "I need to talk to you.'

"How could you possibly know it's posterior from over there?"

"Who cares?" said Cristina. "Get an endoscopy if you don't believe me. I need to talk to you."

"Okay," Meredith said. "Talk!"

Cristina paused, at first thinking of the best way to put it, but then settling for an emphatic "Break up with Shepherd!"

"You're disturbing my patient for that?" Meredith said. "You've already said that more times than I can--"

"I know," she interrupted. "But . . . you trust me, right? I'm your person." She looked intently at Meredith. She didn't especially care whether she broke Sloan's confidence, she just thought they stood more chance if he thought Meredith had broken up with Shepherd for her own reasons.

"Yes . . . I guess so. Yes," Meredith said. "You're weird, but yes."

"Break up with Shepherd," Cristina said. "You don't want him and you _need_ to break up with him. Okay?"

Meredith would have laughed if it hadn't all been so intense. "I'll give it some thought," she said. She wished she didn't have a patient and that she could go and sit in a supply closet or something. Because the conversations she'd had this morning were pushing her to take a risk. She didn't do risk, at least not where her heart was concerned. She just fell into things and got caught up and . . . well, didn't she get hurt all the time anyway? Maybe, for once, it would be worth just acting.


	14. Four Weeks Later Tuesday Afternoon

Chapter 14, Four Weeks Later – Tuesday Afternoon

". . . 'just because he's a neurosurgeon, he doesn't have to wait in line?!' the people start to yell." Derek was telling a joke he'd heard at last week's medical conference "And St Peter looks back at them and answers, 'No, that's just God. He likes to pretend he's a brain surgeon sometimes.'"

Alex raised his eyebrows and said, "Dude, seriously, that's just sad," while Mark simultaneously asked "_That's _what you do at neurosurgeon camp?" and added dryly, "Fortunately, Karev, we have a surgery. We'll just have to tear ourselves away from Dr Shepherd and his razor sharp wit."

Right now, it didn't seem such a bad thing that he lived behind a façade, Mark thought, because it meant that he could talk to Derek and get through a surgery without anybody knowing that his life was in shreds. Yang was right; he was trapped. Trapped by his past actions, his guilt, his need for love and by his fear of it and -- he hated that he thought this -- by Derek's friendship.

"Evidently you need to be a neurosurgeon to get it," Derek said "Our humor is beyond the intellect of a …" he smirked playfully "surgical beautician."

"You keep telling yourself that, man!" Mark said, walking away with Alex in tow.

"He's in a good mood," Alex said, making conversation. "Maybe he got laid last night." He laughed and then realized his mistake. He didn't actually mean Meredith; it was just something to say. "Sorry," he said and made things worse.

"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't ever bring that up again," Mark growled. Why the fuck he had told Karev anything about Meredith, he had no idea. Puking in hospital rest rooms obviously made him confessional. Like being yelled at in elevators by Meredith's friends made him blow off the consult he was headed for, shut himself in the on-call room and make no attempt to stifle his need to break down.

They reached OR2 and began to scrub in, and he dredged himself out of his painful and pointless -- because nothing was going to change -- introspection.

"Tell me some possible complications of a face lift that have surgical causes," Mark said curtly.

"Facial nerve injury; facial asymmetry; skin contour irregularities," Alex said.

"Okay. . . What about post-op?"

"Hematoma, infection, poor wound healing, fluid accumulation and, long-term, fat necrosis."

Mark was fairly impressed. "You're not quite as idiotic as I thought," he said. "The other main post-op problem is that sutures can spontaneously surface through the skin and produce inflammation that leads to scarring. So we're going to use 5/0 synthetic absorbable monofilament suture. That minimizes the risk but it can be difficult to handle." He paused and Alex nodded. "That means when I let you suture the poor bitch's face later on, you'll have to do exactly what I say without any argument. That clear?"

"You're letting me--?"

"Yeah. That enough teaching for you, Karev? Or would you like to call Addison in LA and whine to her?"

"It's . . . different than I remember working with you," Alex said non-committally, ignoring the snark. He figured he should give the guy a break. It wasn't exactly breaking news that Sloan was an ass and, right now, his life was fucked up beyond recognition.

"Well, I'm told change is good," Mark said, mostly to himself. "Shall we?" he said, indicating the OR.

* * *

Meredith found Derek by the coffee cart.

"Hi," he said, smiling at her. "Would you like some?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I've been drinking coffee all day." After wavering for a few moments while he paid for his coffee, she asked "Are you busy?"

"No," he shook his head. "I'm between patients."

"Good. My shift's finished. Could we talk?" She tried to sound calm but, as was often the case lately, she could barely breathe.

"Of course," he said, slightly amused by her intensity.

"Maybe we could sit outside?" she said.

"Lead the way!"

They sat down on one of the benches outside the hospital entrance. "There's no easy way to say this," she said, using all her resolve to look at him directly. "I think we should break up."

He smiled at her, gently cautious and not understanding. "Did I do something wrong?" he asked. "Because--"

"No!" she broke in. "I don't mean I'm mad at you and I want you to make it up to me. I mean I think we should break up. I want to break up with you."

He swallowed. Once, he had asked for this, for her to tell him clearly if she didn't want him, but now that it was occurring he was floored. "Why now?" he asked her quietly.

"Because . . ." she began hesitantly. "Because we don't work any more. We're not us. We haven't been for a long time. Maybe not since Addison. We're . . .dull and lifeless; we're work; we try to get back what we had at the beginning, but it never happens . . . not properly. And. . ." she struggled to find the right words, "there's something better than that."

"There is?" he asked. "Something . . . or someone?"

She bristled. "That's part of what I mean. You always think you know everything about me. Why couldn't I just want something else? Why couldn't I just want _not_ to be with _you_?"

"You could . . ." he said, confused. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Meredith. I thought we were okay."

"Okay's not enough," she said passionately. "It's not good enough. And it's draining. It drains the life out of things . . . out of me."

"I get that," he said slowly. "I suppose, if I'm honest, I've sometimes felt the same sort of thing."

"About me?" she asked indignantly.

"Well,yes," he said. "Since we're discussing this."

Considering she was breaking up with him anyway, she had become irrationally angry. "That's because you don't get me! You only want me if I'm sexy, fluffy intern girl. You don't want the rest of me. You don't want the part that's dark and twisty. Any time I'm not perfectly happy and adjusted and absorbed with you, I become a problem. Something that has to be fixed. I don't need to be fixed. I need to be loved. He loves me; he sees me; he lets me be myself!"

Derek raised his eyebrows. "He. . .? I thought there wasn't anyone else."

"Hypothetically." She tried to recover her mistake. "The right person would let me be myself; the right person would see me."

"Meredith," he said, not buying this, "I accept that you're breaking up with me. But, don't you think I deserve to know the whole reason?"

"You're incredible!" she said. "Even now, what I say isn't enough for you. If I hadn't been sure this was the right thing to do before, I certainly am now." She took a deep breath. "I'm done," she said. "You picked Addison over me and it's never really been the same. Now, I'm picking me over you. I have to." She got up and walked away, leaving him dazed, overwhelmed and unsure of what he thought.

* * *

"Dude, you look like crap," Alex said as they scrubbed out. "Are you sure you should be working?"

Mark ignored him. He had enjoyed doing the surgery; he had enjoyed being what he recognized as himself for a while. And he knew he looked like crap; he felt like crap; that was pretty much his life right now. But, God it had been nice to feel . . . normal for a couple of hours.

Alex didn't push it, but instead asked, "So, why did you leave the drainage tubes in?"

"Reduces post-surgical swelling . . ." Mark's attention was drawn to Derek standing outside, obviously waiting.

"You okay with the post-op?" he asked, distracted, and Alex nodded. "I should probably go see what he wants."

"You lost?" he said, as he emerged from the OR.

"In some ways, yes, I think," Derek said enigmatically. He sighed. "Meredith just broke up with me."

Mark stopped dead, his breathing almost non-existent and his heart racing. He said nothing. He didn't know what to say.

Derek raised his eyebrows, expecting a response.

"You're delusional . . . she wouldn't . . ." Mark tried to say, but his throat was dry and the words came out somehow strangled.

Derek's stared at Mark, his mood suddenly changed to raw, obdurate anger. "My God!" he said. "You are unbelievable! It's you, isn't it? It's you who 'sees her.'" He shook his head in disillusioned disbelief. "I have to have been crazy to have listened to her. I knew you were still the same. I should never have become friends with you again. You have literally no concept of trust or loyalty, have you? You just have to bring everything down to your level of fucked-up self-loathing."

At first, Mark tried to think of some way to explain everything that he had thought and felt and hadn't done; but, when Derek made these final accusations, something in him snapped.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," he growled dangerously. "You have no idea what I feel. You consistently underestimate me in every possible fucking way--"

"I don't underestimate your ability to screw up other people's lives." Derek interrupted nastily "Although I guess it's comforting that you also seem to manage to screw up your own at the same time."

Mark looked down and inhaled, trying to make sense of his conflicted urges to smack Derek in the face; to give into his confusion and despair; or to spring this torturous trap that he and Derek lived in and walk away with his sanity intact.

"I fell in love with Meredith," he said quietly. "It happened without my noticing. And I'm sorry for that -- and not just for your sake. But nothing happened. Nothing except that I hurt her and myself for the sole reason that I was trying not to be who you think I am. Yeah, I screwed up with you and Addison. But that doesn't define me and life's too fucking short to spend any more time acting like it does. I'm done with this shit. If you can't see that I'm your friend, I'm done with you too." He paused, as Derek shot him a disparaging look. "And don't even think about trying to hit me again." This provoked Derek, who lunged at him, but Mark easily intercepted him and landed a violent blow on the side of his face, sending him reeling "Because I'm not going to let that happen." Breathing heavily, he walked towards the main door in the hallway. "Get Karev to stitch you up!" he said as he pushed through the door "I have better things to do with my time."


	15. Four Weeks Later Tuesday Early Evening

Chapter 15, Four Weeks Later – Tuesday Early Evening

"Fuck!" Mark stormed along the hallway leading from the OR, muttering to himself furiously. He had to suppress his instinct to hit something, conscious of the growing soreness in his bruised right hand. Because that would be just fucking typical, to smash up your hand and have_ nothing_ left in your life, he thought.

When he reached the attendings' locker room, he pulled off his scrub cap and discarded it on the floor. He roughly pulled at the door of his locker, cursing at it when it briefly resisted opening. Not bothering to change, he pulled a sweater on over his scrubs, put on his black leather jacket, slammed the locker shut and blasted back out into the hallway.

He didn't care that he wasn't supposed to drink. He didn't care that it was 4:30 in the afternoon. All he wanted to do was get to Joe's as quickly as possible and drink himself into insensibility. He didn't even care that he would feel like shit in the morning -- or later that night, probably. He just wanted to feel better now. No, cancel that, he wanted to feel absolutely fucking nothing.

When he reached Joe's, he made his way to the bar, not noticing or caring about who else might be there, sat down and buried his head in his hands. He didn't look up when Joe asked him, "What can I get for you, Doc?"

"Double scotch, single malt," he sighed. "And keep them coming."

He was so lost in his own rage and misery that he didn't notice Meredith, who had come over from the corner table she'd been sitting at, standing by his shoulder. He looked up, startled, when she asked softly "Is this seat taken?" and indicated the stool to his left. She smiled, uncertainly, waiting for an invitation to sit down.

"Sure," he said. "Sit! You can watch me give myself alcohol poisoning, as long as you promise you won't try to save me."

She raised her eyebrows. "So, you're talking to me now?" she teased him.

He sighed again. "When was I not talking to you?" he asked.

"Since you gave me 'the speech?'" she said. "You know . . . the one you all learn when you hit puberty. The 'it's not you it's me,' 'there was never anything going on,' 'I'm still in love with my last girlfriend' . . ."

"Now, _that_, I didn't say to you." he said. "But I am sorry . . . that was a bunch of crap I made up to . . ." To what? Preserve his friendship with a denigrating asshole? Fuck that! Fuck Derek!

"To what?" Meredith asked.

He shrugged and drained his drink and then sighed. He _hadn't_ slept with her; he hadn't even treated her well and he'd done all this for Derek. Well, fine! She'd broken up with Derek now. He was going to tell her he loved her and Derek could go fuck himself.

"You know, I broke up with Derek," she interrupted his thoughts.

"Yeah?" he said cautiously, flexing his right hand a little. "I may have heard something about that."

"Derek told you?" she asked.

"Well . . . yeah, kind of."

"Was he okay?"

"Uh . . . not exactly." He smiled at her. He had begun to feel calmer and realized that it was because she was here with him. "But that wasn't entirely your fault."

Meredith didn't understand, but she didn't want to talk about Derek anymore and changed the subject. "You know, it wouldn't be so surprising if you _were_ . . ." she said.

"If I was what?" he asked, confused.

"Still in love with Isabella Rossellini," she said coyly.

"Excuse me?" he said and then realized what she meant. "Isabella Rossellini and McSteamy, huh? They sound like a _very_ hot couple. You should introduce me to them some time." He laughed dryly and for a moment she thought she had offended him, but was reassured when he smiled at her.

Joe freshened his drink. "You want something?" Mark asked Meredith.

"Tequila please, Joe," she said.

"Anyway, I'm not." he said, looking down at his drink, not wanting to meet her eyes. "In love with Addison, that is."

She took a deep breath. "You're not?" she asked softly.

He shook his head, still looking down. "I'm in love with you."

Her eyes filled with tears. "Seriously?" she whispered.

He laughed slightly and turned his head sideways to look at her. "Yeah . . . seriously," he said. "God, I missed you, Meredith."

"I missed you too," she said.

* * *

"You want me to take a look at that?" Alex asked cautiously, helping Derek to his feet.

"Did you know about them?" Derek asked him accusingly.

"No." he sighed "Well . . . I guess I sort of knew something, but--"

"So the whole damn hospital knows that they're sleeping together?" Derek said irrationally.

Alex grimaced, not wanting to deal with this. "I don't think anybody else knows –- except Yang. And, I don't think they're sleeping together. That is, they _weren't. A_fter what you just did he's probably screwing her in the on-call room right now!" Derek looked at him incredulously. "Sorry," Alex mumbled. "But, anyway, I don't. I had the impression that he blew her off for some reason. He seemed to be pretty cut up about her, though."

"Oh, come on, Karev!" Derek said. "I've known him for most of my life and he has no feelings for women that aren't intimately connected to his dick."

Alex sighed. "Dude, listen. I get that your day sucks. But, this has nothing to do with me and I don't want to talk about it, okay? Let's just get you to an exam room and take a look at your face."

* * *

Once his face had been cleaned up and sutured and Karev had gone, a sinking loneliness began to permeate Derek's anger. He had nobody to talk to about this, because, once again, he had lost his best friend and his partner at the same time. He even considered going to Richard's office and asking if he wanted to have a drink with him, but decided against it. Partly because he didn't want to have to explain that he had had yet another brawl with Mark.

So, having nobody else, he called his ex-wife's cell phone. "Addison Montgomery!" she answered after a few rings. She sounded bright and confident and, for a second, he hesitated, concerned that he might ruin that. But, he had to talk to someone. "Hello?" she said, when nobody replied to her greeting.

"Hi, Addison," he said.

"Derek?!" She had not bothered to look at the caller id when she picked up and was taken completely off guard. "Is that you?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have called you. I--"

She interrupted him abruptly. "Okay. Just so we're clear. If you're going to tell me that 'you're done,' I'd rather you just kept it to yourself. Because you already divorced me, if you remember, and I got the message."

"No. . ." he said, not understanding. "I just needed to talk to someone. You were the only person I could think of."

"How flattering!" she said, but then softened slightly. "Is there a problem?" she asked.

Derek sighed. "Meredith left me," he said. "And she's sleeping with Mark."

She paused, trying desperately to feel sympathetic and well . . . not laugh. "Really?" she said. "That's . . . that's awful."

"Addison, are you laughing?" he said.

"No!" she lied. "Of course not. That would be--" She burst out laughing, unable to suppress it any longer. There was dead silence on the other end of the phone, and she stopped herself. "I'm sorry," she said, clearing her throat. "I don't have that much time right now, Derek, but, I guess, if you're quick . . ." Wasn't this exactly the kind of thing she left Seattle to get away from? And why was it her concern that his slutty intern had left him? The rest of it she couldn't even begin to contemplate.

". . . and you know," evidently she had missed whatever had preceded this ". . . it was against my better judgment. It was only because Meredith persuaded me that I needed to reconcile with him because of the cancer--"

"Cancer?" she broke in, having no idea what he was talking about and this being the most concrete idea in the sentence.

"He really didn't tell you?" Derek said. "I'm surprised. I thought that was just scotch and self-pity talking."

"Who didn't tell me what?" she asked, becoming frustrated.

"Mark." he said "That he has cancer."

Addison breathed in sharply and clasped her hand to her mouth.

"Addison?"

She didn't answer because she was trying to remember exactly what Mark had said in his call to her a month earlier.

"Addison? Are you there?"

"Yes." She had found her voice, but only just barely. "Is he . . . is he okay?"

"That's really not the point of--"

"Yes, it is Derek," she interrupted him. "You can get another woman, as you've ably demonstrated. He can't get another life. Is he okay?"

"He seems to be. I believe the treatment's going well," Derek said, reluctant to discuss this, but recognizing that she was right. "It's been difficult for him, though."

He could hear Addison's rapid breathing on the other end of the phone and, after a few seconds, she spoke again. "Derek, I can't talk to you right now. I have . . . I have things to do. And I . . . I can't talk to you. I'll call you back later perhaps." She hung up without waiting for him to respond.

He sighed. Since it was Richard or nothing, he would just go back to the trailer and try to get his thoughts in order.

* * *

Meredith smiled. "I think. . ." she said. "I think that I'm in love with you too. I don't know how it happened, but. . ." She shook her head. "No, that's wrong. I don't _think_ I am; I _know _I am. I'm in love with you. You make me feel . . . real."

Impulsively, he caught her hand in his, brought it to his lips and kissed it softly, slowly and warmly and, as he did this, she felt the same belonging she had felt that night in the hospital room. "You make me feel that way too," he said, leaning towards her and stroking her hair with his other hand. "You're beautiful," he murmured softly in her ear. "God, I want to fuck you." He nuzzled her hair and she could feel and smell and almost breathe his desire and she let out a soft moan.

He leaned away from her, let go of her hand and smirked. "We're kind of on display, here. We could use the rest room, I guess." But then he changed his mind. "Do you mind if we don't?" he asked awkwardly. "It's just that I've been in too many rest rooms with too many women who don't matter."

His honesty disarmed her. "I can wait . . . but not for too long," she flirted.

He laughed, but his mood shifted slightly. "You know, don't you, before you get in to this, that I'm not exactly . . . well-adjusted. That I'm kind of--"

"Dark and twisty?" she supplied.

"Well, yeah . . . _that_, I guess," he said. "I have a lot of stuff in my head that sometimes gets in the way of . . . you know, being with someone."

She shrugged. "I have stuff in my head, too. I think that's part of why I like you so much."

"Then there's the fact that I have cancer." He sighed. "I mean, the treatment seems to be going the right way, but . . ."

She stroked his arm. "I want to be with you," she reassured him gently.

"Yeah?" he asked uncertainly. Addison was the only serious relationship he'd had. The way that had ended had made him feel that things like this could never work out for him.

Meredith nodded. "More than I've ever wanted to be with anybody," she said.

Mark sighed. She'd said she wanted to be with more than anybody; he should have been blown away by this; instead it just brought Derek to mind again. "There's just one more thing," he said. "You should know that the whole Derek situation is still a problem for me. And, believe me, you'll never know how much that pisses me off." He sighed again. Despite his adrenalin-mediated outburst in the OR--and, damn, had that felt good!--Derek was still his family, his _brother. _"It makes it so much better that you just broke up with him of your own accord, even though you thought I didn't want you. It makes it clean, you know? Not like New York."

Meredith's heart sank and she thought she could actually feel herself grow pale.

"You okay?" Mark asked.

She nodded uncertainly, not wanting to do anything that would change how he felt about her. But in the end, she had to say, almost inaudibly "It wasn't quite like that."

"Huh?" he asked, not understanding her.

"Alex. . ." she hesitated "Alex said . . .he knew that I was miserable about. . . about you not wanting me." She swallowed and forced herself to continue. "He was just trying to make me feel better. Alex and I are sort of friends."

"Grey," he said, startling her by using her surname. "Can you just say what you mean?" He saw the look on her face and he knew he was being an ass, but she was doing her confusing thing again, and he had to understand what she was saying.

"Alex . . . implied . . . strongly that I was wrong that you didn't want me. He said that you had said something to him. That's all he said, but he was very insistent."

Mark closed his eyes and groaned, but said nothing.

Needing to fill the silence, Meredith rambled. "And Cristina was very weird this morning. She's been driving me crazy saying that I should break up with Derek for weeks now. But this morning, she was . . . adamant." She paused to catch her breath and then went on. "But you wouldn't have said anything to Cristina . . . she doesn't even like you and--"

She broke off abruptly when Mark sighed and ran his hands over his face. "I talked to her," he said quietly. "In the elevator. She cornered me and I . . . I said some stuff about you."

"She didn't tell me that she had talked to you," Meredith said almost desperately. "I didn't know."

"Would you have broken up with Derek if Yang hadn't told you to?" Mark asked.

Even though a part of her didn't want to be, she couldn't be less than honest with him. "I don't think so," she said. "Not today. I might have later on. But, today . . . no."

He nodded sadly. "So you broke up with Derek to be with me . . . because you knew that I wanted you?" he asked carefully.

"Yes," she said softly. "Is that a bad thing?"

Mark tried to tell himself that he wasn't trapped; that he could break free; but he couldn't. He couldn't be that guy; not again. He felt so defeated that he almost wanted to cry. "No, Meredith," he said eventually. "It's not a bad thing. It's. . ." he laughed sadly "it's an amazing thing and . . . thank you for loving me. I just . . . can't. I can't do that to him again." He shook his head, stood up and threw some money down on the bar. He turned away and walked towards the exit. Just before he left, he turned back and said "Listen, if I ask for you not to be on my surgeries for a while, it'll only be because I can't work when . . . I have to be able to do my job."

"I understand," Meredith said and, at some level she did and, anyway, she didn't want to make his life any harder. She called Joe over. "Can I please have another shot of tequila?"

"Keep them coming?" he asked.

She considered and then said "No. Just one more." This was solvable. This could work out. There was no need to get wasted or cry or pretend that she didn't feel. She knew that he loved her and that she loved him and . . . it was solvable.


	16. Five Weeks Later Wednesday Morning

Chapter 16, Five Weeks Later – Wednesday Morning

"Hey, Michelle," Mark entered the patient's room with Alex trailing behind. Having Karev assigned to him had become a routine that he admitted to nobody but himself was sort of comforting. Mark had wanted to be mad at him for helping to complicate his relationship with Meredith. But, honestly, the blame lay with him and Derek and their screwed up symbiosis. Karev had intended to help Meredith, and Mark could only feel good about that. And Karev was an idiot, but he was easy to be with and, although Mark had little intention of telling him this, he had a talent for Plastics.

"See, Nicky . . ." the pretty blonde said to her friend, an addition to the usual group of her high school football coach husband and two little girls. "I told you the doctors here are cute!"

"Not as cute as you," Mark made a weary effort to smirk flirtatiously, as her husband made a mock objection.

She was 32 years old. She taught English at the same high school where her husband worked somewhere in Spokane. She was sort of innocent and sexy at the same time. She obviously loved her kids and her husband, and they obviously loved her. And she had stage 4 breast cancer with massive metastasis into the lungs. She didn't know that part yet. She refused to talk to oncology anymore until she'd had a full run down of the reconstructive options, which is why he was here now.

"Dr Karev here is pretending to be a plastic surgeon for the day," Mark said. "So, he's going to talk through the various primary surgeries you might have and the options for reconstruction. Karev?"

He switched off as Karev began to talk. He was starting to really hate his job. He hated that every patient he saw was damaged or desperate in some way and it seemed like an ironic reflection of his own life that he had chosen this specialty. Everyone thought that plastic surgery was this superficial gravy train full of hot blondes -- and, if he was honest, that's why he had gotten into it in the first place. But, in reality, it brought you face to face with all the ways that human beings could suffer. So, you had cheerleaders with their faces burned off who, for all the skin grafts and however much shit he talked, were never going to look the same as before. You got kids with congenital disfigurements and lives that reflected that. And, yeah, you got hot blondes . . . sometimes . . .less at Seattle Grace than at his practice in New York. But, too often, they were sad, anorexic models, worried about being too old at 25; or actresses strung out on lack of fame who wanted yet another procedure that, at one time, he hadn't had the maturity to refuse. He used to tell people plastic surgery fixed people's insides. And maybe it did for some people. But when he saw cosmetic patients now he had to fight the urge to use himself as an example that looking hot didn't necessarily get you a happy life.

He was tired. He wanted Meredith. He wanted Derek to stop being an ass. Since his immunotherapy treatment the previous Friday, the side effects had never properly worn off and he had constant low-grade stomachache and nausea and, although Julia Lindstrom insisted it was all going great and it was just an autoimmune response, the fact that he felt unwell all the time worried him. Because even though his life was screwed up and depressing, that didn't mean that he wanted to lose it.

". . . and it's also possible to have one, or even two breasts recreated using tissue from another part of your own body" Karev was saying, and at that point he had to excuse himself and leave the room, because he was about to cry.

Karev gave him a look that easily translated into the inevitable "Dude?" and he could hear him stalling with some, actually pretty inventive, crap about "Dr Sloan keeps his pager on vibrate . . . he must have been paged."

But he couldn't stay in that room and look at that beautiful woman and her family and talk about breast reconstruction when he knew that she was more than likely going to be dead inside of two months.

The crying thing really disconcerted him. It had started the day Yang yelled at him in the elevator -- and he _was_ pissed at _her_ about Meredith. He had to be pissed at _someone_ and he'd never much liked her anyway. After that it seemed like he'd developed this new reflex where he started to tear up at the least fucking thing. On Friday morning, Torres had yelled at him -- and why the fuck did women feel the need to yell at him all the time? -- about 'Shepherd won't work with Grey, or you; you won't work with Grey and you won't work with an intern and you have to have Karev! Why the hell can't you guys be professional?' and he had only even realized that the embarrassing tears had started when her expression had softened and she'd said "Oh, honey . . ." when in hell did he become 'honey?' "I know it's all really hard on you. I'm so sorry."

He took a deep breath and made himself stop . . . thinking. Karev's lesson du jour was the reduction of congenitally overdeveloped male breasts because . . . of-fucking-course . . . that was his next surgery. But every time he tried to talk to Karev about it, the guy would start to laugh. This had in fact been his own reaction when he was as much of ass as his . . . protégé, he guessed. But, in his current frame of mind, he couldn't deal with it. So he started looking through Cohen's _Mastery of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery_, thinking that he would just have Karev read up on gynecomastia and save himself the trouble and pain of discussing it with him.

"Dude. . ." Mark ignored him and continued looking through the book. He assumed Karev was going to ask him about the consult and he didn't want to talk about it.

"Dude, seriously!" Alex said again.

"Yeah," he said. "I heard you the first time," still not looking up from the book.

"You seriously want to pay attention--" Alex began but didn't get to finish.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he heard Addison's voice say. "Gone over to the dark side, I see, Dr Karev."

As Mark looked up from the book, startled, Alex shrugged helplessly at him. "I tried," he said.

She looked incredible. And he _wasn't_ in love with her anymore but he couldn't help still taking pleasure in her and so he just smiled foolishly, not knowing what the hell to say.

"Karev, would you excuse us?" Addison said charmingly. God, nobody he knew talked like her. It was like conversation turned into a sexual technique.

When Karev left, he finally found his voice. "You look. . ." But he couldn't find an adequate adjective.

"You're don't look too bad yourself," she said, smiling, but noticed the dark shadows under his eyes and in reality thought that he looked terrible. "You're a little . . . grayer." She touched her own hair to finish the sentence.

"Well, life'll do that to you," he shrugged.

Addison tensed. She felt awkward and she didn't know how to ask him about the cancer, which was what she really wanted to know about, so she prevaricated sarcastically. "So … you're 'done?'" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am . . ." he said, looking down at the ground uncomfortably.

"Remind me . . . didn't I break up with you?" she asked.

"Well, yeah . . ." Mark said awkwardly. "I just had . . . I had a hard time accepting. . . " He closed his eyes briefly "I just needed to say it. I'm sorry." He hoped she would let it go.

She nodded slowly and then smiled mischievously. "So you got back together with Derek and then broke up again, I hear."

"Yeah, well, that's . . ." he growled incoherently.

"And you're sleeping with Meredith?" Her eyebrows rose in emphasis.

"Who tells you this stuff?" he asked her. "And I'm not. At least, only in fantasies brought on by enforced celibacy."

She raised her eyebrows again.

"Yeah, well, you trained me in it," he said morosely. "With the goddamn 60 day thing."

She cleared her throat. "And . . . you have cancer?" she asked in a softer tone as she forced herself to look into his eyes.

Mark sighed deeply and then tried to change the subject. "Do you want to look at a house with me?" he asked.

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"I'm serious," he said. "I'm supposed to look at a house in a couple of hours. It's only 20 maybe 25 minutes from here." He looked at her with that half-imploring, half-sleazy look that she had, at one time, found irresistible. "If you go with me to look at the house, I'll tell you about the cancer." He was just playing for time, but it _would_ be helpful to have her along.

"Why do you want me to look at a house?" she asked, still confused.

"Because I'm buying one," he said "and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, and it's your kind of thing."

"Okay," she agreed hesitantly. "I guess I can look at a house. But . . . are you doing okay?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. "It's. . ." He looked away from her "It's kind of hard."

She considered, weighing him up. "Can I have a hug?" she asked softly.

He gave another of the looks she remembered -- the one where he let you see into his soul for a brief moment, and she felt a small shudder of nostalgia.

"I guess that would be okay," he said, more grateful than he was willing to reveal and wrapped his arms around her.


	17. Five Weeks Later Wednesday Afternoon

Chapter 17, Five Weeks Later – Wednesday Afternoon

"Why you would spend twice the average American annual salary on something so horribly uncomfortable, I will never know," Addison said, fidgeting in the passenger seat of Mark's car. "I always hated this car."

He didn't respond. They must have had this conversation at least twenty times before. And arguing the merits of a 2004 Porsche Carrera seemed like something from a past life. As far as he was concerned now, it was a car, he was used to it, it went from one place to another and it didn't break down.

"So, where are we going?" she asked.

"54th Avenue, South." After a pause, he asked "Does Derek know you're here?"

"Does that mean has the Seattle Grace gossip machine alerted him? Or does it mean have I seen him?"

There was this other side to the way she talked that wasn't like verbal sex. It was more like using a hundred words where ten would have done just as well. He hadn't realized before how tiring this was.

"Have you seen him . . . obviously."

"No," she said. "I have until Saturday. I guess I'll catch up with him some time. I came to see you."

"To talk to me about something I didn't want you to know about?" he asked snarkily. He had been a little dazed when she'd first shown up at the hospital. It was like this warm breeze had blown in on a day when his mood was threatening to tip him over the edge. But now he felt kind of cornered by her.

She narrowed her eyes. "Do you want me to look at this house?" she asked.

He sighed. "Why do you care what's happened to me, Addison?" he asked. "I thought part of the reason you left Seattle was to get away from me."

She looked down at her hands in her lap. "I left to get away from _us_," she said quietly. "And from me and Derek; and from _you_ and Derek. But, that doesn't mean I don't care about you, Mark. I've known you for my whole adult life almost. We're friends."

They had reached 54th Avenue and he turned into a driveway, pulled up and turned off the ignition. He looked away from her, through his side window. "Okay. If you really want to know. . ." He sighed again. "It's indescribable. I'm tired and I'm depressed and I feel like shit. I always hurt . . . somewhere; I feel like I'm going to puke nearly all the time. I think they give you the immunotherapy just so you feel so bad that you don't care if you die."

"Don't say that," she whispered, briefly touching his hand.

"Don't worry," he said. "I got over that. That was part of why I called you that time." He turned to her. "Now my problem is that I'm scared I'm going to die." Tears formed in his eyes and were reciprocated by a greater swelling of tears in hers. But, unwilling to go any deeper with these emotions, he said, "It's okay, Add. I cry like a girl at the slightest little thing right now." He inhaled. "You want to look at this house?"

"Sure, " she said quietly and they got out of the car

* * *

Addison found the real estate agent annoying and intrusive. She was a small, dumpy woman, probably in her late forties and her behavior was insufferable. She was very pushy with Mark and Addison felt the need to defend him; although he seemed oblivious and kept returning to the kitchen to stare dreamily out the window at Lake Washington.

Eventually, she said "Do you think you could leave us alone for half an hour?" pointedly enough that the woman agreed to go.

It was a beautiful house, with hardwood floors, raised living areas and what she thought must be twenty-foot ceilings. The walls were painted white and the windows were huge and the whole thing was full of light.

When she had given herself a tour, she followed him into the kitchen. He had opened the French doors and gone out on to the deck and she joined him out there.

"It's a lovely house," she said. "But don't you think it's--" She had been going to point out that it was a little big for one person, but he interrupted her.

"You like the view of the lake?" he asked.

"It's a nice view," she agreed.

"Yeah. . ." he said and turned and smiled at her. "I could live here."

"It would take a lot of maintaining," she said.

"Housekeeper."

"And it's very expensive."

This seemed to jolt him out of his reverie and he stared at her incredulously. "Seriously, Dr Addison Forbes Montgomery Trust-Fund?!" he said. "I have the money, Add. I like the house. I'm going to take it. Kitchen's nice, huh?" he said, going in from the deck and looking around at the huge, spacious room and its fittings.

"Oh, yes," she said. "It'll be _very_ useful for Chinese take-out and beer."

"Champagne," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"We used to have champagne with Chinese take-out, because you wouldn't drink beer, remember?" He smiled at her again.

She looked at him. "You're really going to take this house?" she asked.

"Yeah . . . why not?"

She swallowed. "What if . . . what if you get . . . more unwell?" she asked inarticulately.

"You mean, what if I die, right?" He laughed gently at her. "Did you always have such a gift for taking the fun out of things?" He thought for a moment. "If I die. . ." he said, smiling playfully, "I'll leave it to Derek. He can park the trailer outside and ruin the neighborhood."

"Well," she said, realizing that he really wanted the house, "I guess that's okay then. You have my approval." She smiled. "So, now that 's decided, can we talk about something else?" she asked cautiously.

"No," he said, assuming she meant cancer. "I have immunotherapy tomorrow afternoon. You can come with me if you like. You'd like my oncologist; she's like a blonde version of you."

"You want me to come with you?"

"No . . . _you_ want to, and _I'm_ letting you," he said, by which he meant that he couldn't do this alone anymore and, even if it was only for one session, he would love her to be there.

"Okay," she said simply, because she had known him long enough to understand his real meaning. "But that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about. What I want to know is why Derek thinks you're sleeping with Meredith."

He paused and then said, "Because I told him that I'm in love with her. . . right before I hit him."

"Why?" she asked.

"Which one?"

"Why did you tell him that you're in love with her?" she said and added, laughing, "Why you hit him would be obvious to anybody who's met him!"

"Because it's true," he said softly and shrugged. "It just happened. I told her about the cancer . . . so she could tell Derek if he ever stopped hating me and I . . . croaked." Addison looked horrified at his choice of word. "And she started working with me. And I got to like her. And Callie said some stuff, and I spent some time with her . . . and I realized I was in love with her. That's it . . ."

"You fell in love with her because Callie told you to?" she asked incredulously. "Because she has such great taste in lovers?!"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah! I _am_ including you in that statement," she said.

He ignored her. "She's perfect," he said a little sadly.

She looked at him wistfully. "Were you always this sweet?"

He was a little doubtful about her choice of adjective, but replied, awkwardly, "I may have been . . . trying to be, when I wasn't screwing stuff up."

"Or other people!" she bantered. "Screwing, that is." She laughed slightly. "Anyway, since we're talking about it . . .why aren't you screwing her?"

"Derek," he sighed.

"She left him, didn't she?" Addison asked.

"Yeah. . . she left him for _me . . ._ even though I tried to prevent it. It had been good between Derek and me for a while and I didn't want to be--" He broke off and shook his head dejectedly. "Seriously, Add. What's the use? The whole situation's so fucked up I can't even get my head around it."

Addison considered and then burst out, "Screw Derek!"

"Excuse me?" He smiled.

"Seriously, screw him! Not literally . . . although I do sometimes wonder, and even more so now, why the two of you don't just cut out the middlewoman and sleep together!" She laughed, highly amused by her own joke.

"How long have you been working on that?" Mark asked dryly.

"Only since Derek called me last week," she said indignantly. "But honestly, how long can a person go on feeling guilty about the same thing? You have cancer; you're . . ." She searched for something else to make her point. "You're buying a house; you've spent the afternoon alone with me and you haven't once suggested sex." She pretended to be hurt "Your whole life has changed. If you love her, screw Derek and be with her. If he's anything like the person I was once married to, he'll deal with it just fine. It's time he had an opportunity to be whatever it was your slutty intern. . ." she smirked at him "used to call him."

"McDreamy," he supplied. "You know they call you Isabella Rossellini?'

"Is that right?" She arched an eyebrow disdainfully. "Well, I think I'm much better looking than her."


	18. Five Weeks Later Thursday Morning

Chapter 18, Five Weeks Later - Thursday Morning

It was 6:30 am and Meredith and Cristina had joined the line at the coffee cart. "Do you want to practice, Mer?" Cristina asked snarkily. "I'll ask you what kind of coffee you'd like, and you'll give me the answer that actually gets you the outcome you'd prefer."

"Oh, just drop it!" Meredith said. "It was annoying a week ago and now it's just old. I _preferred _that I was _honest_ with him, and the outcome will take care of itself and be just fine."

"Except that -- and forgive me, despite his great and undying passion for you -- he was getting physical with Satan yesterday."

Meredith sighed. "I'm sure he has an explanation," she said patiently, adding, "What?!" when she saw Cristina's open-mouthed expression.

"Who the hell are you and what have you done with Meredith?" she asked.

"Meredith found her knight in shining whatever," she said and almost immediately regretted it. She didn't want her relationship with Mark to be anything like her relationship with Derek. But she'd said it now and she'd have to complete the thought if she wanted to deflect Cristina. "It's just that he's off fighting dragons right now."

Cristina raised her eyebrows dubiously. "Or screwing them."

Meredith made a sarcastic face -- trust Cristina to make use of her little metaphor to keep the subject going -- but said nothing.

"Yang!" Callie had spotted them and walked towards them. "Do you want in on a surgery?"

"Maybe . . ." Cristina said.

"It's a _very_ interesting case, with a _very_ skilled attending," Callie cajoled her and something in her smug manner made Cristina hope that she was being offered a procedure with Hahn.

"Okay," she said and waited for more information.

Callie smirked wickedly. "Thank you. Go find Sloan. Karev's off sick. You're doing a breast reduction on a guy!"

Cristina made a disgusted noise and said "Why don't you send _her_?" indicating Meredith, who shook her head as Callie said "Can't do that. He doesn't want to work with her."

Cristina looked questioningly at Meredith, who mouthed "It's fine."

"So, Grey -- Hahn, Bailey or me?"

Meredith looked at Cristina and laughed slightly, but resisted the mischievous urge to choose Hahn. "What's your surgery?" she asked Callie.

"Arthroplasty," she said. "For avascular necrosis of the hip and shoulder. The patient has lupus and she's been over-prescribed steroids for, like, years." She paused. "It's probably going to be a really long surgery."

"That's fine," said Meredith. She had a lot of energy and a lot of time to kill.

"So she gets avascular necrosis and I get . . . man boobs?" Cristina spluttered.

"Gynecomastia," Callie corrected her. "And I think he's a 15 year old kid. It's sad. Show some compassion, Yang!"

"And yet you smirk," Cristina replied as she walked away.

* * *

"Just in case you're in any doubt," Cristina said. "I don't want to do a plastics procedure and I don't want to work with _you._"

Mark scrutinized her disbelievingly. "Well that makes two of us," he said dryly. "You know, I'm one of the US's foremost plastic surgeons and your boss. Who are you exactly? And where do you get off talking to me like that?"

Surprisingly, he felt good this morning. Not sick, not hurting . . . well, not much, and optimistic. He was even reasonably confident that this gynecomastia case was straightforward enough that the surgery could really help the guy.

"I bought a house yesterday," he said. He took enormous pleasure in telling people this.

Cristina gave him an incredulous glare. "And this is interesting, why?" she asked. "I have had one conversation with you in my life, which proved to be a complete waste of time. Can we just get on with . . . whatever it is that you do?"

He sighed. "You're not exactly my favorite person either, you know? You screwed up almost every relationship I have last week."

"Oh, _that's_ odd," she said. "Because I thought I told you how could _fix_ your relationships and yourself. What you chose to do with the advice is not my problem."

"Your arrogance notwithstanding, Dr Yang," Mark began sardonically, but then sighed again, "it might take a little more than your interference to do any of that."

"Are you confiding in me?" she asked hostilely. "Because we are _not_ friends."

Ignoring the snark, Mark looked down awkwardly and asked, "How is she?"

"You mean Meredith?" Cristina asked. "Oh, Meredith's 'fine!'. How's your girlfriend?"

"As in Addison, I take it?" he asked wearily.

Cristina raised a meaningful eyebrow. "You know, for a while, even I believed that you loved Meredith. And you certainly convinced _her_. But I guess once a manwhore--"

This conversation was threatening to ruin his unexpected good mood and he interrupted her. "You know, Yang . . . most people think you're an unfeeling robot, does that make it true?" he said, but added, "Does Meredith think I'm having sex with Addison?"

Cristina sighed. "Meredith doesn't think at all where you're concerned," she said. "You're her knight in shining whatever, apparently."

"I'm her what?"

"It's a compliment," Cristina said matter-of-factly. "I believe it means she loves you." She really had no idea why said this, other than that Sloan and Meredith seemed to be incapable of managing their own lives.

"Fuck! I never thought I'd be anybody's . . . " Mark began to say, but trailed off when he understood the meaning. Knights implied rescue, didn't they? He wasn't exactly in a position to rescue anybody right now. Anyway, he'd always kind of thought that Meredith was rescuing _him_.

Cristina sighed exaggeratedly, regaining Mark's attention.

"What you said . . . about traps . . . and Derek and . . . you know," he said.

"Yes . . ."

"You were right," he said. "I'm trying, Yang. I just have to--"

"Okay, that's quite enough bonding," she said, becoming uncomfortable and impatient. "Can we start being pretend surgeons now?"

"I'm waiting for the patient's antibiotic shot to kick in," he said. "You have to give an antibiotic about an hour before liposuction."

Cristina easily reconciled the fact that she actually didn't know this with her complete lack of interest in plastics.

"And, just so we're clear," Mark growled. "_I'm_ the pretend surgeon; you're just here to do what I tell you. By the way, how _are_ you at fetching coffee?"

* * *

"Okay, people," Callie said to the OR staff. "That's the hip taken care of. We'll take a little break before we start on the shoulder. Five mintues?"

"Ortho's very . . . different." Meredith said, making conversation.

"Separates the women from the girls, right?" Callie said. "Speaking of which . . . did you see Addison yet?"

Oh, you really got out on the wrong side of someone's bed this morning! Meredith thought, steeling herself for whatever Callie might say next.

"So how's it going with you and Mark?"

Meredith pretended not to understand the question, but Callie continued anyway.

"Because he spent the whole of yesterday afternoon with Addison looking at a house. Did you know he was buying a house?"

Meredith tried not think about what Cristina had said about 'screwing dragons,' but her certainty was beginning to dissolve under Callie's onslaught.

"Because, you know, Grey . . . men always do seem to return to what they know, don't they? I mean, George has only known you and Stevens for, like, a year and you guys always come first with him. Mark's known. . . been in love with Addison for, what . . .ever?" She shrugged. "I'm just saying."

It had been one week and nearly two days since Meredith had last felt her heart sink and she had been enjoying the lack of that sensation. Callie was friends with Addison and, although part of her thought all this just sounded like bitterness, Meredith wondered if she knew something and was trying to let her know.

"So . . . " Callie said in a louder voice. "Time to start up on the next four hour surgery, ladies and gentlemen! You ready, Grey?"

She nodded, thinking that she had never been less ready for anything in her life and wishing she could just go somewhere and . . . well, no, she couldn't do that, because she had said she wouldn't cry.

* * *

"What the hell is all that?" Mark asked, watching Addison stagger towards his table outside the hospital cafeteria weighed down by a thick folder of papers and a tray with her lunch on. "Did you get your old job back?"

"It's research," she said, nearly dropping it all as she sat down. "I got on the internet last night at my hotel," she had deliberately avoided staying at the Archfield "and did research on non-operable duodenal cancer and immunotherapy." She smiled at him, obviously delighted with herself.

He raised his eyebrows. "Do you want a girl scout badge?" he asked dryly.

She ignored him. "Well you probably know all this, but it's fascinating. It's all based on motivating the immune system to work differently and cause a massive build-up of cancer-defeating cells -- NK cells, T-regulatory cells. I never knew all this before! And then I got on the Seattle Grace intranet and looked up your clinical trial and it sounds great. I mean, it sounds . . . totally hopeful. I can't wait to meet your oncologist. . ." She ran out of steam when she realized that he was just looking at her and trying not laugh.

"What?" she asked.

"Thank you," he said. "You're crazy. But it's nice that you care."

"Well, of course I do," she said. "I already said that. Aren't you eating lunch?" she asked, noticing that he only had coffee.

"No."

"You should eat," she said. "You look like you lost weight."

He sighed. "Did you research the side effects?" he asked.

"Well, yes. . ." she said, looking into her folder and trying to find the relevant printout.

"Then you'll know that I'm planning on throwing up later," he said "I thought eating lunch would interfere with the purity of the whole experience."

Addison blushed "God, I'm so sorry! I'm such an idiot!"

Mark grinned. "You're a _what_?' he teased her. "I'm not sure I heard that right. Would you mind saying it again?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just on this occasion. Not as a general rule."

Taking a bite of her sandwich, she attempted a joke to cover her embarrassment. "I always thought Grey was anorexic. I was worried that maybe she was rubbing off on you."

He just smirked at her.

"What now?" she asked. "Seriously . . . what? . . . Oh, that's just disgusting! And about the woman you say you love! Men are pigs -- especially you!"


	19. Five Weeks Later Thursday Afternoon

_A/N: the line 'that gossip spread faster than STDs ...' is not mine, but belongs to the fabulous **offrhoads**.  
_

* * *

Chapter 19, Five Weeks Later – Thursday Afternoon

"So what are you going to do about Meredith?" Addison asked gently. She was sitting next to Mark on the bed, while the IV fed recombinant interleukin 2 into his bloodstream. At least, that was what Addison had told him, adding an incredulous 'didn't you read up on this?'

He was beginning to feel the first uncomfortable stirrings of nausea, which, given that he was only one hour into a three-hour treatment, was a seriously bad sign. He sighed. "You're being very accommodating about her." He didn't want to answer her question, so decided to talk crap instead.

"Well, why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "I think it's great that you're in love. Wow, I wish I was!" She paused and then understood. "You mean. . .because of us?" she ventured "Because, Mark, obviously, there is no _us . . . _not any more." She smiled. "Except that we're friends. And, as a friend, I'm telling you need to do something about her before she starts to doubt you. She really never seemed like the most secure person."

As Addison said this he remembered Meredith saying, '_I don't feel safe without you.'_

"She said I made her feel secure," he said, half to himself.

"Well, you're pretty good at that," Addison said and nudged him affectionately. "I remember when you made me feel that way."

"You mean the five minutes after we fucked?" he asked nastily.

"No, Mark," she said, obviously hurt. "You made me feel secure when I . . . when I needed it. Why do you have to be so . . . such . . ."

"An ass?" he asked miserably. "I honestly have no fucking idea." He covered his face with his hands and groaned. "I'm sorry, Addie," he said, his voice catching. "But you made me so . . . unhappy . . . you made me doubt everything about myself . . . and it always seemed like you didn't even care."

Addison breathed in, but didn't respond, because she didn't want to interrupt him.

"And. . ." he swallowed "it _is_ about Derek. But it's not just that . . . it's . . ." He struggled to bring clarity to feelings that were almost too painful to recognize. "I can't love her if it's going to be the same thing," he said "Because it would. . . it would finish me."

She put her hand on his arm and, to her surprise, he let her leave it there.

He sighed. "According to Yang, I'm Meredith's 'knight in shining whatever,' whatever the hell that means." He was still uncomfortable with this concept and still seriously doubted his ability to live up to it.

"It suppose it means that she loves you," Addison said. "But don't you think you should talk to Meredith rather than Yang or Callie?" she asked.

He was lost in his own thoughts and didn't respond. "You know, she said that she doesn't mind me being screwed up," he said.

"You actually had that much conversation with her?" Addison asked, making fun of him.

"Well, yeah. . ." he said, frowning slightly. "But nowhere near enough."

"Mark," she said. "Listen to me. You love her. I meant it when I said screw Derek. And try to forget what I did to you."

"What we did to each other," he said very quietly.

"Okay . . . that's . . . thank you for that," she said and waited a few seconds to absorb the fact that she had been forgiven. She inhaled. "Anyway, forget that. Just tell her you love her and . . . well, _love_ her."

"Just like that?" he asked, teasing her "Because we're both such experts at loving other people?"

"There's always a first time," she said. "Maybe if you can do it, then there's hope for me. And, between you and me," she said "I think you're pretty good at it . . . when you're not screwing stuff up, of course."

"Just _don't_, would you?" he said. "Because I'm dangerously close to. . . " He sighed. Seriously, the crying shit was going to have to stop.

"You know, women like it when men can cry," Addison said.

"You know," he mimicked her "This is one time I don't give a fuck what women like."

* * *

As the afternoon had worn on, Mark had become increasingly subdued and Addison could tell he wasn't feeling well. Eventually he fell asleep, which gave her space to think.

She couldn't understand how someone who was so confident about sex -- or at least, had been . . . she really hoped that she hadn't made him doubt _that, _because well . . . Oh, for God's sake, Addison, focus! she thought as she forced herself to cut off her inappropriately steamy memories -- could be so hopeless about just talking to someone that he loved. She reached a decision.

"It's not me you want here," she said and got up and left the room. She found a nurse and asked her to tell Mark, if he woke up, that she would be back, and then walked up the hallway to the elevator. When it came, she got in and pushed the button for the surgical floor.

When the elevator doors opened again, Cristina Yang was waiting there. "Dr Yang," Addison acknowledged her, as Cristina raised an eyebrow at her. She had intended to walk straight past her, but at the last minute asked "Do you happen to know where I can find Dr Grey?"

"Why?" Cristina asked rudely.

"Well. . ." Addison tried to remain polite as she gave the obvious answer "Because I'd like to see her."

From the look on her face, Yang appeared to be weighing up some kind of dilemma.

"Meredith's my person." she eventually said curtly

"Well, that's good," Addison said, although this made no sense to her. "Do you know where I--"

"She's already been hurt by _one_ of your little dramas," Cristina interrupted.

Addison was at first confused, then understood "Wow. . ." she said, stung by the description of the pain between her and Derek as a 'little drama.' "Please, Yang," she said, trying to recover herself, "Don't hold back will you!" And she actually felt tears prickling her eyes. She had forgotten how much she hated Seattle Grace.

"You played with him the whole time you were here," Cristina went on. "And now that Meredith wants him--" she finished off her sentence with a disgusted snort and glared at Addison.

"You're talking about Mark now, I take it?" Addison faltered, thrown by the continued dispassionate précis of her emotional history.

Cristina's only reply was to raise her eyebrows, disdainfully, again.

"Do you . . . does Meredith think. . .?" she asked. She could have kicked herself for being naïve enough to imagine that her former colleagues would think she had come for anything but sex, and for forgetting that gossip spread faster than STDs in this damn place.

She was also infuriated that this arrogant int. . . resident now, she guessed, made her feel so powerless. She was Dr Addison Montgomery, renowned neonatal surgeon. . . not that she'd gotten to cut anything lately, and not that she felt like that person any longer. But, nevertheless!

"You're not screwing Sloan?" Yang asked her.

"No," she said. "I just came because Derek told me. . . " She sighed internally, knowing that the whole thing made it look like she hadn't moved on at all "Mark was sick. I'm flying back to LA on Saturday."

"And you don't intend to?"

Addison shook her head.

Cristina's face betrayed a sequence of emotions that went beyond her habitual baseline contempt for whoever was standing in front of her. Disbelief, surprise and . . . Addison was astonished . . . embarrassment.

"Oh," she said. "Meredith's in OR3 with Torres." She turned her back on Addison without another word and pressed the button to recall the now departed elevator.

* * *

"Addison! Hey girl!" Callie called to her as she entered the OR, holding a mask to her face. "Shame you're not a leading Ortho authority." Callie sounded stressed. She had both hands inside the patient's left shoulder cavity and appeared to be holding the woman's shoulder together. "Patient's muscle integrity is for shit," she said "It didn't show up in the tests. Grey!" she snapped. "Get your hand in here and press down on the prosthesis."

Addison sought out Meredith's eyes and smiled and raised her eyebrows encouragingly. She received a look in return that was something between surprise and resentment. Once again, she thought how much she hated Seattle Grace. Why did everything here have to be so damn complicated?

"Callie," she said. "I can see . . . well, obviously you're busy, but. . ." Callie, distracted, ignored her. "Dr Grey." She felt ridiculously self-conscious. "I'm just going to leave my cell phone number in the scrub room. Do you think you could give me a call when you're finished here?"

Meredith was red in the face from exertion and seemed to be in a mood of mingled fury and freaking-out that Addison intimately understood. She briefly speculated whether this frame of mind was a consequence of being with Derek and then Mark, now that she saw and recognized it on the face of the only other woman who had done this, and wondered if she was really doing Meredith any favors by helping things along. 'Cynicism,' she remembered her mother's annoying words, 'is unbecoming to a lady.' She gave a snarky reply in her head and focused.

"Seriously," she said encouragingly. "Please call me. It's important."

Meredith nodded suspiciously and said "Okay," and Addison smiled at her. "I'll just get out of your way now," she said to Callie and left the OR.

* * *

"Well I never. . ." Addison sighed when Derek's voice accosted her as she stepped into the hallway. He had on that surprised, hurt 'I'm the good guy; whatever did you do now?' expression. "I was wondering when I'd run into you."

She rolled her eyes. "I know it's difficult for you, Derek. But please try to remember that the only reason I'm here is because you called me."

He gave a cold smile. "So you're here to see Mark?" he asked. "Should I be humiliated that both the women I . . . loved," he emphasized the past tense "are . . . fighting over him?"

Just be the grown-up, Addison! she exhorted herself and took a deep breath. "Derek" she said. "There probably are things that you should be humiliated by, in fact there _definitely_ are but -- and try to understand this -- I'm not with Mark. Hell, I'm not with anyone!" She laughed a little wildly. "I think the two of you were enough for one lifetime."

Derek actually looked slightly penitent and she thought she saw a glimmer of someone she used to know. She was taken aback.

"I. . . I . . ." she stammered uncertainly. "Listen, Derek. I have . . . stuff to do. But maybe we could grab a drink with me later? Joe's? 8 pm'ish? I mean, you _did_ call me." She didn't know how to continue.

His eyes registered confusion, but then softened slightly. "If you like," he said. "But not Joe's." And he gave her directions to the bar he had gone to with Mark what now seemed like an age ago.

* * *

"Hey" Addison said softly.

"I guess. . ." Mark muttered, recognizing that that didn't make any sense. "I hate this fucking disease." Because, once again, the immunotherapy had reduced him to a debilitated mess.

"Dr Lindstrom said you can go home," she said.

He pulled himself up, painfully, into a sitting position and sighed. "You want to drive?" he asked.

Her eyes widened. "You want me to drive the Carrera?" she asked.

"I know you hate it. It's just that. . . " He shrugged, defeated by the requirement to express himself clearly.

"I can drive it," she agreed uncertainly. "But you never let anyone drive it."

"That was in the life where I had a body that worked right," he said morosely. "By the way, you may have to pull over for me to puke, which will be gross and I'm sorry that you have to--"

"Really, Mark, I've seen worse things," she interrupted, much more impatiently than she had intended. "I _am_ a doctor!"

"Everything okay?" he asked.

She frowned slightly. "I saw Derek," she said.

"Yeah . . . how'd that go?" he asked. "You tell him to go screw himself?"

She shook her head.

"Not that easy, is it, huh?"


	20. Five Weeks Later Thursday Evening Part 1

_A/N: this chapter is the first one in this story that has been expertly edited by my amazing, talented beta __**DeniseSB**_

_I am aware that there are readers who were kind enough to anticipate 'MerMarkishness' (such a great term!) and that I am dragging my feet on this. If you guys are still reading, I have to get two more things done in two more chapters (one of which is this one), so there will be a little longer to wait. But chapters 22 and 24 will be pure, unadulterated Mer/Mark._

* * *

Chapter 20, Five Weeks Later – Thursday Evening, Part 1

When they finally reached the hotel, it was damn near impossible for Mark to make himself walk from the parking lot to the lobby. If he had had his way, he would just have stayed in the car and slept there.

In the end, and despite the lifetime that Addison had taken to adjust the driver's seat and mirrors, and despite her . . . you could only call it unique . . . driving style, which she repeatedly excused with an 'I-told-you-I-hated-this-car' mantra, he had not thrown up on the way back. He almost wished he had, because the nausea was now overpowering and his stomach was killing him.

He was vaguely aware of the fact that Addison was not talking, except to make little encouraging noises along the lines of 'Oh, here's the lobby' and 'Look, the elevator's here, we don't have to wait' and wondered, gratefully, when she had gotten this sensitive. Once they were in the elevator, he leaned against the wall and had to resist the urge to slide down it and sit on the floor, aware that having to get up again would be far worse than enduring the ride to the 22nd floor standing up.

Back in the room, he shut himself in the bathroom and forced himself to vomit. He had thought that anything would be better than the oppressive nausea. But the after-effects of this incredibly bad move were too fucking awful for words . . . and, anyway, the nausea returned in the ten minutes or so it took him to get it together and leave the bathroom.

Addison, who had evidently been pacing, immediately walked towards him. She made sympathetic, soft sounds that some part of him recognized as kind. But, not wanting to talk to or deal with her, he turned his back on her, removed his leather jacket and dropped it on the floor and practically collapsed on the bed. As he tried to find a position to lie in that wasn't totally uncomfortable, she came over and covered him with a spare blanket.

"I'm sorry you're hurting," she said softly. "I can't even imagine what it's like. Why don't you try to sleep? I'll stay here for a while, if you like." She brushed her fingers lightly through his hair and then, after gently rearranging the blanket, went and sat on the couch.

* * *

When it got to just after 6:30, Addison began to get frustrated with Meredith. Everything would be so simple if she would only just call her. She checked her cell phone, once again, to see if she had missed a call, knowing perfectly well that she hadn't.

Sighing, she got up and walked over to the bed, where Mark was half-sleeping.

"Hey," she said quietly, close to his ear.

"Hey Mer," he said, and her eyes widened. "I'm sorry . . . I should've . . . " He opened his eyes. "Addison?" he asked, obviously confused.

"Mmhm" she said. "Listen, do you mind if take your car for a while? I'll take a card-key and let myself back in."

"'S fine," he said. "It's not like I'm going anywhere."

* * *

Including post-op procedures, they had finally finished the double arthroplasty at 6:45. Callie had eventually become too tired to bitch at Meredith, and even seemed a little chastened. But, really, the damage had been done and she was now lying on a gurney in the basement hallway, clutching her cell phone in one hand and the piece of paper with Addison's number on it in the other, and wondering what the hell to do.

She heard the rustle of a bag of chips before she heard Cristina's voice and sat up. She reached out her hand for a chip and Cristina held out the bag for her.

"That was a long surgery," Cristina observed. "Was it good?"

"It was hell," Meredith said. "It would have been even without Callie . . . picking on me!" She felt childish and petulant and so she used a childish, petulant term.

"She _picked on_ you?" Cristina raised her eyebrows while stuffing several chips into her mouth.

"She seemed a little . . . off-base and she took it out on me," Meredith sighed. "And, evidently, she thinks that Mark's sleeping with Addison," she said quietly.

"And you're not drinking tequila with one hand and slitting your own throat with a scalpel with the other _because_?" Cristina asked.

"Now you're picking on me too," Meredith said, and grabbed the bag of chips. "And, anyway, it's only been half an hour since we finished. I need a break before I start freaking out." She sighed again. "Well, before I call Addison and then freak out. She came into the OR this afternoon and asked me to call her."

"So do it," Cristina said. "And, she's not."

"Not?"

"Doing Sloan. I asked her."

Meredith rolled her eyes. "You didn't learn anything from the last time you interfered?" she asked.

"Yes . . . that you're impossible to help," Cristina said. "And what was so wrong with what I did, anyway? Aren't you happy you're not with Shepherd? You certainly seem saner!"

Meredith paused, then said quietly. "You're right. You were right. I _am_ happier without Derek." She sighed. "Don't you think that's tragic, though?" she asked. "That something that started out so . . . perfect . . . could end up so . . . lifeless?"

Cristina narrowed her eyes. "Is that a trick question?" she asked.

"Excuse me?" Meredith asked.

"I mean . . . if I say 'yes,' will I have to spend the next two hours discussing whether or not you should be with Sloan in case that ends up 'lifeless' as well?"

"When have I discussed _anything_ for two hours?" Meredith asked indignantly.

"Well, let's see . . . on the few occasions you passed out _before_ you'd talked for three?" Cristina smirked.

They heard the clack of high heels in the hallway that led into theirs and looked at each other.

"Who . . . ?" asked Meredith.

"Ah, Dr Grey . . . " Addison sighed as she came through the connecting door, "and Dr Yang." She raised her eyebrows guardedly; she hadn't really wanted a second encounter with the antagonistic resident. "How nice."

"I was _going_ to call you," Meredith said, indicating the paper in her left hand. "The arthroplasty went on for ever, and . . ."

Addison smiled only a little frostily. "Never mind," she said and perched on the gurney next to Meredith. "Can I talk to you for a few minutes . . . alone?" She looked pointedly at Cristina.

"Fine with me ," Cristina shrugged. "Can I have the chips back?" Meredith handed them back, taking one before she did so. As an afterthought, as she left, Cristina proffered the chips to Addison. Recognizing that this was some sort of peace offering, Addison took one and nibbled at it delicately.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, they both spoke at once

"Addison, why . . . ?" Meredith began challengingly while Addison tried to plunge right in with, "I realize that I'm the last person . . . "

They paused and tried to speak again and, after another false start, they both laughed slightly.

"Can I go first?" Addison asked, and Meredith shrugged her acquiescence.

She took a deep breath. "I know this is none of my business . . ." Why she had ever embarked on this mission, she didn't know; every word that came out of her mouth made it seem less and less like a good idea. "and I'm well aware that you don't like me very much--"

"Addison," Meredith interrupted. "Are you seriously here to talk about _us_? Is that _seriously_ what you're here for?" She was starting to shake with nerves and anticipation of pain, because she hadn't quite believed Cristina's assertion that Addison wasn't sleeping with Mark . . . happiness was, after all, elusive in her life . . . and she tried to cover her apprehension with hostility.

Addison sighed, looked down at her hands and fiddled with the sapphire ring she had bought to fill the void left by her engagement ring and wedding band. "You're right," she said. "So . . . to get to the point, then!" Her tone of voice softened. "Forgive me if I'm wrong," she said, "but I think you think I'm having a . . . thing. . ." Oh, where did that come from? Prep school? she thought wryly, "with Mark."

Meredith swallowed, trying not to allow tears to form.

"Meredith, I promise you, I'm not. I was just worried for him. He didn't tell me about the cancer. He didn't even want me to know. But I got to hear about it and," she shrugged, "I can't help considering him my friend."

She paused and looked at Meredith, trying to gauge her reaction. "But that's not exactly why I wanted to talk to you either," she said. Addison waited to see if Meredith would respond. When nothing was forthcoming, she continued.

"Mark and Derek and I have a . . . " She smiled and shrugged awkwardly "Well you know all that, I guess." She gave a little laugh that was intended to be dry, but came out slightly hysterical, "Hey, is there anybody who doesn't?" She recovered herself and cleared her throat. "And, Mark's . . . he's very conflicted about Derek right now. And I probably shouldn't say this, because he'd kill me, but he's scared to fall in love . . ." she swallowed "again."

She leaned confidentially towards Meredith and said in a low voice "I guess they don't call me Satan for nothing." This didn't have the loosening up effect that Addison had intended and she sighed, before saying, "Meredith. I know Mark pretty well, and it's obvious to me that he's in love with you."

Meredith still said nothing, but something in her attitude made Addison feel comfortable about touching her gently on the shoulder.

"He had a really rough time this afternoon with immunotherapy," she said softly. "But I talked to his oncologist and she says he's doing really well. I thought you'd like to know that."

Meredith nodded, pleased. And, somehow cautiously willing to trust this woman that she had, and still did really, so much disliked, she asked candidly "How do you know Mark loves me?"

Addison smiled. "Well . . . because he told me and . . ." she paused, partly because she was concerned that she might offend Meredith and partly because it made her a little sad. "He used to feel that way about me, and I recognize the signs." She gave a slight sigh. "And he said you called him 'your knight in shining whatever' and he still wants you. If he didn't love you that would have made him run for the hills!"

"Cristina!" Meredith burst out, horrified that Mark had gotten to hear this; then added, "Oh, never mind. It's between me and her," when she noticed Addison's confusion.

Addison nodded vaguely, not understanding. "But," she went on. "I think that if you wait for _him . . ._" She shrugged. "Well, either you'll wait for a really long time or you'll be visiting him in jail because he's killed Derek." She smiled and Meredith laughed slightly. "So," she sighed. "Meredith. I know it's hard, but I think you have to take the initiative."

"I sort of did . . ." Meredith said.

"Well, not _your_ sort of initiative," Addison said "although, undoubtedly it's very alluring and sweet." Oh! Bitchy, bitchy, Addison. For god's sake remember why you're here! she thought, and fiddled awkwardly with her ring again. "I'm sorry," she said. "What I meant was, you'll have to take the sort of initiative I might take."

Meredith raised her eyebrows.

"Just once!" Addison retorted, adding with a little wounded sarcasm, "Don't worry, you don't have to turn into me."

"Sorry." Meredith mumbled.

"He's pretty sick right now," Addison said. "I took his card-key and said I'd go back, but I think maybe you should go instead."

Meredith stared at her, torn. The idea sounded a little bizarre . . . but also kind of perfect, and exactly what she most wanted to do right now. But what if it misfired, and ended up making Mark feel ambushed? She shook her head. "I don't know . . ." she said.

"I'm serious," Addison said. "He thought I was you earlier, and it was obvious that he'd have preferred it that way." She paused and then said, emphatically "Just go up there, be with him. If he talks about Derek, tell him to remember what I told him about that."

She became conspiratorial again. "He's incapable of standing up to women when they gang up on him . . . it has something to do with Derek's sisters, I think . . . so that ought to work."

She laughed slightly, and then continued. "If he acts like an ass, call him on it, and . . . " she hesitated "do something for me, will you?"

Meredith nodded uncertainly.

"Just try to be what he thinks you are . . . because . . . well, I was never very good at that."

Meredith looked down. "Don't take this wrong way, Addison," she said quietly. "But I don't think I have to try. I think, with him, I just . . . fit."

"Well, I hope that feeling lasts for you. I really mean that." She paused before she said. "His room at the Archfield is 2225. Go up and let yourself in."

"Why are you doing this? Meredith asked.

Addison considered. "Well . . . Mark's my friend and I'd like him to be happy, and, honestly, Meredith. . ." she sighed. "I'd like all this to be over and to . . . make a little good karma to be going on with."


	21. Five Weeks Later Thursday Evening Part 2

_A/N: Thanks, for everything, to amazing beta **DeniseSB**, who also created the term 'McPervert'. _

* * *

Chapter 21, Five Weeks Later – Thursday Evening, Part 2

When Addison left Meredith, she made her exit from Seattle Grace as quickly as possible. Out in the drizzly parking lot, she reached Mark's car and fumbled in her purse for the key. She felt immense relief when the car gave off the expensive chirping and flashing of lights that indicated it was unlocked. Because all the way there she had wanted to break down sobbing and this reassuring signal meant that she was nearly safe enough to let herself go. Once inside, the central locking system carefully activated to keep out the world, she gave in to this urge.

For five minutes she cried loudly, unrestrainedly, and desperately. She cried for the mess that her relationships had become. She cried for her lack of recognition of how much love had been available to her. She cried for Mark; for his vulnerability and pain and his loss, that she hoped was temporary, of what had always seemed unending vitality. And she cried for her utterly dead marriage and the over-wrought acquaintanceship that had survived it. Because the next stage of this torturous odyssey to bring closure to her past -- which was what her trip to Seattle seemed to have become -- was a discussion with her ex-husband.

"Pull yourself together, Addison," she thought. "Just do this and then you can go back to LA and leave it all behind." She inhaled briskly through her nose, wiped her eyes, checked herself in the vanity mirror and made a few little adjustments. Then she turned on the ignition of the silver Porsche and headed towards the bar where she had arranged to meet Derek.

* * *

Derek's bar turned out to be an unassuming, but comfortable little place. When she walked in twenty or so minutes late, there were no more than ten customers there, including Derek who sat at the bar nursing a scotch.

"Hello," she said tentatively, hovering next to him.

She startled him and roused him from introspection. "Addison!" he said. "I had been wondering if you were going to make it."

She sat down on the bar stool next to him. "I had something to do," she said. "It took a little longer than I thought it would."

He nodded, uncurious and accepting. When she first met him, she had thought this one of his good qualities, that he accepted explanations without the need for clarification. By the end of their marriage, she interpreted it as lack of interest. Now, she didn't care one way or another, except that she was pleased she didn't have to explain where she had been.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Derek asked. "I don't think I'd recommend their champagne. I think I once overhead someone saying their California Pinot Noir was acceptable."

She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to work out whether he was mocking her. "Beer, thank you." she said, wanting to defy his definition of her, even though it was pretty much accurate. "Any kind. I don't care."

Derek raised his eyebrows at this, but decided to take her at her word and called the barman over. "A Budweiser, please . . . make it two," he said, "and one glass." He smirked slightly at her as he said this.

"Thank you," she said stiffly as the barman handed the drink to her. She ignored the glass and ostentatiously drank from the bottle.

"Did you get a cab here?" Derek asked, making small talk.

"I took Mark's car," she said.

He raised his eyebrows and laughed. "Don't you hate that car?" he asked. "I seem to remember you complaining about it. The suspension in those things_is_ a little rough, I guess." He smirked again. "Maybe that's part of their charm, though. If you like that kind of thing," he added snarkily.

Oh, you're _so_ not talking about the car, McPervert! she thought. "It's fine," she snapped. "It grows on you." It didn't, she still hated it, but she wasn't going to say that to Derek. "Anyway the Carrera's suspension," Is that what makes the damn thing so uncomfortable? she thought. "can hardly be worse than that exhibit from the Land Rover museum you drive around in." She was tempted to indulge in an innuendo contest with him, but after today's events, it felt somehow wrong. In any case, she wasn't sure she could match his smutty inventiveness. After making her innuendo-free retort about the car, she took a mouthful of beer.

Derek shrugged complacently. He was perfectly happy with his choice of vehicle and delighted with his joke. "I've always thought it was typically vain of Mark to have that thing shipped from New York to Seattle," he said casually.

She sighed; sometimes his shortsightedness was just unbelievable. "You don't think there might have been another reason? That he wanted to have something here that belonged to him, for example?" she asked.

Derek snorted derisively. She ignored him. She didn't have the time to engage in a battle of petty retorts. There were more important issues to deal with here.

"Don't you care about him?" she asked disbelievingly. "You know that he still thinks of you as his friend, don't you? Even though you make his life so much harder than it needs to be . . . than it already is?"

Derek interrupted her with a weary sigh. "Addison . . . seriously?" he asked. "_I_ make _his _life harder? Ha! That's a really good one." He took a swig of beer and then drank down what remained of his scotch as a chaser.

Oh, what is wrong with you? she wondered. If that's a non-starter, we'll just have to embrace the shameful and tactless! She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "When Mark and I slept together . . . 'that night' . . ."

He raised his eyebrows again, incredulous and angry, and took advantage of her hesitation. "You really want to discuss _that_?" he asked.

She chewed briefly at her lip. "I just wondered whether . . . ," she groped for the right words, "it may have been more shocking, in a sense, that _he_ slept with_ me_ than that _I_ slept with _him_ . . . " Why, once more, did the ability to express herself like an intelligent adult fail her? "Because, _we_ had been drifting apart," she continued, determined to be non-contentious "for some time. But you and Mark were fine, right up to the moment when he . . ."

"Fucked my wife?" Derek supplied coldly.

Addison ignored him and breathed in. "You were such good friends," she said. "I know he hurt you, but . . . don't you miss him?"

"I seem to remember having a conversation like this quite recently," Derek said deceptively calmly. "Ah, yes . . . that would have been with Meredith, before he fucked her as well." He had adopted the ice-laden tone that, ever since she had become one of its targets, utterly dismayed her.

She swallowed. "He didn't," she said quietly. "He said that he loves her, though."

He laughed wryly and said, "So, you and Mark destroyed our marriage. Then _you_ destroyed my relationship with Meredith. And now you're attempting to dignify his seducing Meredith away from me?" He shook his head in disbelief.

"Why don't you just blame me," she asked softly. "At least two of those things wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been there."

He laughed again. "You're incredible," he said, his voice becoming more intense. "I _do _blame you. But that doesn't change the fact that he is entirely untrustworthy. It's impossible to have a friendship with him because he will always be led by his . . . pathological compulsion to take whatever might make him feel better at any given moment." He sighed and took a long drink of his beer before getting the attention of the barman and ordering another scotch. He didn't ask her if she wanted anything else.

"You know what he said to me?" he continued. "He said that what he had done in New York with you didn't define him. Whereas . . . well, you said it, we were _best_ friends . . . we were _brothers_ . . . and I know him all too well. It totally defines him. It's just one example of a lifetime of fucking over other people because he can't live with himself. He should never have stopped seeing the goddamn shrink." He stopped and sighed.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing," he snapped. He wanted his universe to make sense. He wanted somebody to blame for the fact that, even though he strove to do the right thing, nothing seemed to work out for him. But, however much he tried to deny it, he wasn't entirely sure that his assessment of Mark was correct any more. Uncertainty had crept in. Mark had said things outside the OR the last time they spoke that, in retrospect, challenged him. Maybe they were all –- Mark, Addison and himself –- too much defined by the past. Maybe it was time they broke free and moved on.

He sighed deeply, and Addison, who had been anxiously scratching the label off her beer bottle with a manicured nail, looked up at him expectantly.

"What?" she asked, wanting him to share his thoughts.

The barman refreshed his scotch and he took a sip before saying, "Sometimes Mark . . . surprises me, I guess . . . in a good way, you know?" He looked at her as though seeking some kind of confirmation. "Do you think I underestimate him?" he asked. "That's something else he said."

"Well" she said, as much to herself as to him, "it's very easy to see him as just a shallow manwhore." She twitched an eyebrow slightly. "And it's not as though he does much to dispel that image a lot of the time. But, you're right. He can be very . . . surprising."

She waited a few moments before reorienting the conversation slightly. "Was your relationship with Meredith going well?" she asked not a little disingenuously.

Derek sighed and shook his head. "I wanted it to be," he said. "I wanted to love her. I did love her. But, she's so . . . uncommunicative, and so difficult to understand or please. I just hoped we could work it out. She and I had something so special when we first met."

Because, of course, I _really_ needed to hear that again, Addison thought.

"I wanted to start over, to get that back, and I was trying to. It was only because of her that I tried to patch things up with Mark. I wanted to please her." But God knows if this was true. Because, for the few weeks he had been friends with Mark again, it hadn't felt like anything other than . . . friendship.

"Really?" Addison said, a little dismayed. "So . . . you hated every moment that you spent with him?"

"Well, no," he countered, his ambivalence causing him to be irritable. "I was . . . I'm used to him, I suppose, so it was comfortable in some ways." He sighed, exasperated.

"You stayed with him and read neurosurgery journals because you're _used_ to him?" she asked incredulously.

"He told you about that?" Derek asked.

"He loved it," she said simply.

He nodded briefly, inhaled and sipped at his scotch contemplatively.

"What's the matter?" she risked teasing him. "Did your high horse die?"

He raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Have you been working on that a long time?" he asked.

"Why do you and Mark think I have no spontaneous wit?" she asked, piqued. She had, in fact, been working on 'high horse' remarks ever since Mark had first applied the term to her. She had always thought it fit Derek better.

"Because we know you," he replied without thinking what he was saying and, when he realized, sighed again. He felt betrayed by emotional reflexes that didn't match his grudges. "Is he okay?" he asked.

"I guess," she said. "The therapy's brutal, as you know. But his doctor says he's doing well."

"It's nice that you came to see him," he said.

"It would be nicer if you made up with him . . . properly," she said. She allowed a few seconds to elapse before she spoke again. "You know he wouldn't have anything to do with Meredith because of you?" she said, omitting the part that had to do with her. "Whatever you think of him, he's been hurting himself and her because he doesn't want to hurt _you_ and because he doesn't want to . . . 'be that guy again, Add.'" She had made a passable impression of Mark that made Derek laugh slightly.

"He thinks she's 'perfect,' Derek," she said, sensing an opening. "He changes when he talks about her. I know it's a lot to expect of you but, as things weren't working out for you and her, couldn't you let it go and move on?"

He sighed. "That's all sounds very charming," he said sarcastically, unwilling to be moved quite yet. "But doesn't it strike you as odd that the only two women he's 'fallen in love with', were both involved with me? Don't you think that's just a little pathological?" the over-used word just seemed to fit, "and not a little competitive and vicious?"

"Actually, I've thought about that," she said, "and I reached the conclusion that it's partly because he got to know us and became our friend. With most other women it all goes so fast and it's so superficial that there's no chance of his feeling anything."

He shrugged, reluctantly conceding this point. "That doesn't explain why you both responded," he said quietly, his mood shifting.

_Now_ you have to show that you felt something for me? she thought sadly. Because, even if the sentiment had to be split with Meredith, it revealed something that tore at her heart just a little.

She gave a little shrug, desperately wanting to deflect the question. "Oh, that's obvious, Derek!" she said lightly. "He's incredibly attractive when he's not doing all that awful, blatant flirting."

He raised his eyebrows incredulously. "You can't say that to me!" he said, half outraged and half on the point of laughing.

"Why not?" she asked with mock defiance. "You divorced me, remember?"

"I did," he conceded softly. "At your instigation."

She looked down, played with her replacement ring and decided to accept that the evening was going to include the slight re-breaking of her heart. "I was just trying to get your attention," she said. "That's all I was ever doing, Derek."

Before he responded, he assessed her, and was surprised by his urge to treat her gently. Finally he said, "It's not dead yet, but it may be a little lame."

"What?" she asked, confused.

"The high horse," he said, and the near softness in his voice when he offered this compromise bewildered her.

"You know Derek," she said. "I loved you."

His eyes softened. If they were expressing themselves in the past tense, he could momentarily suspend disbelief. "I loved you too, Addie," he said.

She chose, with great effort and bravado, to regard this exchange as the closure she sought. After taking a deep breath, she changed the subject to something that, ironically, was now much more comfortable.

"Since I arrived, I may have interfered a little between Mark and Meredith," she said. "I may have encouraged them to . . . you know . . . go for it." She smiled placatingly.

Derek nodded. "So, I should just blame you?" he said dryly.

"Exactly," she said. "Because I'll be in LA and not a part of your life." She smiled. "I am Satan, after all. I _should_ be blamed."

"I'll work on it, Addie," he said. "I'm not there yet, but I'll work on it. Okay?"

"Okay," she said and took a sip of her beer.


	22. Five Weeks Later Thursday Night

_A/N: this story develops a little organically and what I said would be chapter 22 in a previous note has now expanded and will cover the next one or maybe two chapters as well. This is just the first part. I hope that's a good thing! Thank you for reading._

_Thanks to fabulous beta **DeniseSB** for edits, suggestions and online therapy._

* * *

Chapter 22, Five Weeks Later – Thursday Night

Later that evening, hurting and nauseated, Mark drowsily recognized that trying to sleep in jeans might not be helping all that much. He hauled himself slowly and painfully off the bed and searched around for something more comfortable to wear. Eventually, he changed into sweat pants that he wasn't certain had been laundered since he last went for a run . . . and he couldn't really remember when that was, but some time before he got admitted to the hospital . . . and a ratty black cashmere sweater that Addison had given him for his 28th birthday, which he pulled on over the T-shirt he was already wearing. The sweater, he was far-gone enough to admit to himself, had a comforting quality that a manwhore surgeon of 39 years of age definitely shouldn't be craving. There were advantages to being alone sometimes; not having to keep up any kind of an image was probably the one he most valued.

He returned to bed, this time crawling under the comforter and curling around a spare pillow, trying to relieve his stomachache. He wished at this point that he hadn't been so fucking stubborn about toughing the whole thing out without meds. If he felt this bad tomorrow, he would have to go to the hospital . . . or maybe Addison would go? . . . to pick some up. Julia had reassured him that she had changed his prescription to avoid induced recollections of everything that had gone wrong in his life. And, although he wasn't entirely convinced about this, the pain was so bad now he just wanted it to stop, even if that meant dealing with the emotional assault of reliving his past.

It seemed as though every defense he had ever had was being broken down. He no longer felt like himself. Or maybe that was wrong. Maybe he felt exactly like himself. The self he had tried not to be for so many years because it hurt too fucking much and made him too fucking vulnerable to all the crap that people dished out. He felt like his body had betrayed his mind into going places that he had spent most of his life trying like hell to avoid. But, it was just too much goddamned effort to maintain the denial, especially when it didn't even really work anymore. And now, again, he felt tears forming in his eyes. Ah, the hell with it! There was nobody here to see him and crying seemed like the only possible response to how he felt right now.

He heard the card-key being inserted in the door and tried desperately to get it together. He didn't want to upset Addison and, honestly, he didn't want to get into this with her. The thought of dissecting his emotions just made him feel even more exhausted and even more miserable.

The door opened and then closed again, and this was followed by the sound of soft, uncertain footsteps negotiating the darkness of the room.

"Hey, Add," he said hoarsely.

Meredith stood still and cleared her throat. "Hey," she said softly. "I . . . Addison." She gave a soft sigh, defeated by her inability to explain herself and by her anxiety that he was going to ask her to leave.

"Meredith?" he said, recognizing her voice but not understanding why he was hearing it. He panicked briefly, thinking that maybe now he had pain _and_ delirium! Life just got better and fucking better. Although . . . if Meredith being in his room _was_ imaginary, maybe it would be nice just to go with it for a while.

She tried again, but awkwardly went down the same route as before. "I . . . Addison," she said and got no further. She sighed. "Do you want me to go?" she asked and then added in a small voice, "Please don't say that you do."

"Are you real?' he asked uncertainly, feeling very stupid and very exposed.

She laughed a little too much, reassured that he had said something. "Now _there's_ a question," she said. "Sometimes, I guess," and then her mood shifted from dry humor to vulnerable honesty. "I feel real when I'm with _you_," she said very quietly. "I told you that before and nothing's changed." She paused, and when she spoke again her mood had changed again, this time to uncertainty. "Do you think you could turn a light on?" she asked. "It's really freaking me out standing here in the dark."

He half sat up, reached around to the nightstand, and turned on the lamp. Every single movement hurt. But when the light revealed her standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, she looked so damned cute that he couldn't help smiling at her.

"Hey," he said again, affectionately, because it seemed like this routine greeting had turned into a form of intimacy between them.

She smiled gently, obviously getting the significance. "Hey," she replied, as tears of relief started to prickle her eyes.

He was almost pathetically grateful that she was here . . . he didn't even care why or how . . . and that she had challenged his fucked-up, self-limiting sense of right and wrong. "I _don't_ want you to go," he said quietly. "Please stay. I want you to." He reached out his hand. "You want to come over here?" he asked.

She nodded and came and sat next to him on the bed.

He reached up and pushed some stray locks of hair back behind her ear and then allowed his hand to linger for just a moment. He looked into her eyes. "You know, there's really nothing to cry about," he said softly.

She nodded in that way she had that was half-tentative and half determined and sniffed emphatically. "Damn straight! We should make a deal . . . I won't cry if you won't," she risked saying.

For a second, he considered fending off this implication. But really, who was he kidding? Not only was denial too much effort, he probably couldn't pull it off right now. "Yeah, well," he sighed, adding dryly, "I don't think I'm in a position to hold you to that. Not today, anyway."

"Well, then. We'll make a deal tomorrow," she said, smiling. She assessed him, her head on one side. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Because you look terrible."

He narrowed his eyes at her and then raised an eyebrow. "Well, if _that's_ how you feel about me, maybe I_ do_ want you to leave," he said, trying to deflect her concern with humor.

"You don't have to do that, you know," she said. "Act like you're okay when you're not. I mean, I understand why . . . ." She had been about to say something about Derek and his irritation when she said she was 'fine,' but she was anxious to avoid any conversations about him or New York or why she shouldn't be here. "You really do look terrible and I want to . . . I don't know . . . be here for you." She raised her eyebrows a little. "Now that you've lifted the restraining order, that is," she added, teasing him gently.

He sighed and looked down. "You really want to know?" he asked despondently. He didn't really want to tell her. All he wanted was to feel some fucking passion; to touch her and taste her and fuck her and love her and . . . . He closed his eyes and sighed again; he couldn't even fantasize himself into excitement. He could just about summon up, in theory, what it felt like to be aroused and he tried to force himself to actually feel it. He knew that what he ought to want to do right now was to make love to this amazing gift of woman. But he felt like a wreck. Even sitting up for more than five minutes was a fucking stretch. And, honestly, he didn't trust his treacherous body to do anything other than disappoint her as much as it was disappointing him.

"Of course," she said. "I care about you."

He sighed again and took her hand, because touching her made him feel less self-conscious. "It's just side effects," he said. He still wasn't a hundred per cent confident about this, but Julia insisted that it was the case. "It passes." He looked down. "It's just that right now, I really hurt and I'm really tired. It was kind of a bad day," he said.

Meredith squeezed his hand and smiled, but said nothing. That she was actually sitting with him while he held her hand and didn't ask her to leave or say anything about Derek had more or less overwhelmed her.

It occurred to Mark that when Addison had felt bad and he was pressuring her for sex, she would ask him just to hold her. Now that this was the closest _he_ could come to anything physical, he regretted that he'd often been unreceptive to her. He had interpreted the request as rejection and, on the few occasions he'd responded at all . . . one time he had even left the apartment and found a replacement woman in a bar . . . he had been reluctant and morose about the whole thing. He swallowed uncertainly before asking, "Would you . . . ?" He had no idea how to ask this; he had no idea how to do any of this. "Would you want to just . . . share my bed? Sleep with me? Literally sleep, that is?"

She put her head on one side, smiled slightly, and found her voice again. "Well, let's see . . ." she said, gently sardonic and teasing. "I had a 12-hour orthopedic surgery today. Callie more or less told me that you were sleeping with Addison . . . "

He shook his head and said "No . . . I . . ."

"I know," she said softly, adding, with a little twitch of her eyebrow, "but don't interrupt me when I'm whining. Where was I? . . . Oh yes, she told me you were sleeping with Addison, and then the patient's shoulder practically fell apart. The surgery felt more like _Pimp My Ride_ than medicine. I had a weird conversation with Addison. Oh, and the man I'm in love with has been avoiding me for a month." She gave him a little smirk and he looked down, trying to avoid her gaze.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I just--"

"Whatever," she said. "We're not talking about that anymore." Now it was her turn to be embarrassed. "Sorry," she said. "I had a lesson in channeling my inner Satan this evening." She laughed slightly when she saw his obvious confusion. "Anyway, that was the long answer," she said.

She took off her coat and let it drop to the floor, then bent down and began unlacing her boots.

"The short answer is that I had a bad day at the end of a bad month at the end of a bad year, about a third of the way through a mostly bad life. So, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I've had it." She discarded her boots, then stood up and took off her jeans and sweater, leaving on her underwear and T-shirt. "There is nothing in the world I would like better than to 'literally sleep' next to you right now. So . . . move over!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, lifting up the comforter and sliding over to make room for her.

She climbed into the bed and pushed herself against him. "Mmmmm," she exhaled contentedly, almost dazed by the feel of him spooning his body around hers. Because, even though she had imagined this so many times, she wasn't sure that she'd actually believed it would ever really happen.

And then she remembered. "Mark," she said.

"Yeah."

"Did Cristina happen to say something to you about knights and . . . whatever?"

Mark sighed. He'd hoped this wouldn't come up. "Yeah . . . she did, and you know, I--"

"Ssshhh," Meredith said softly. "She wasn't supposed to repeat it. It was just something I said to her because she wouldn't shut up about . . . never mind." She paused. "Anyway. You're not. I don't think of you like that. That was someone else; _I_ was someone else. You're not my knight in shining whatever. You're different than that . . . better . . . better for me."

Relieved but overwhelmed, Mark didn't know how to respond, but eventually said, "That's good because I would've made a crappy knight."

"No . . . you wouldn't . . ." she replied. "But my damsel in distress thing is getting really old, and it's time I moved on."

* * *

At 2:57 am – he knew this because he looked at the clock and the time stuck in his head – Mark was woken up by the urgent need to vomit. He had fallen asleep wrapped around Meredith and had to disentangle himself from her. He tried as far as possible to be gentle, and she, seemingly very deeply asleep, just rolled over and murmured something unintelligible.

He made it to the bathroom and the whole grueling routine started up again. Except that this time, having absolutely nothing in his stomach, he just had to suffer wave after wave of dry heaves that made him feel . . . destroyed was the only word for it. When it seemed like there was some kind of let-up, he doubled-over on the floor in the fetal position, unable to contemplate movement.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably really only minutes, Meredith came into the bathroom.

"Oh . . . !" she said, still groggy from sleep, and her eyes widened. She knelt down beside him and stroked his hair. "I'm so sorry. I didn't . . . . I woke up and you were gone and . . . . Is there anything I can do?"

With great effort, he sat up and leaned against the nearest wall. He drew his knees up to his chest, closed his eyes and sighed, before saying, "It's okay. I'm fine," although even he knew that nobody would buy this ridiculous statement.

"God, I'm sorry, " he groaned and opened his eyes. "Not all that McSteamy right now, huh?" he said, self-deprecatingly. "You're probably sorry you came."

Meredith had, by now, woken up properly. She moved over to sit next to him, took his hand and laid her head on his shoulder.

"I didn't want McSteamy," she said softly. "I wanted _you_. I _want_ you." She stroked his arm with her free hand. "Anyway," she said. "I already told you, remember? I'm immune to all that McSteamyness."

"I really am sorry," he said. "I'm sorry for everything. I've fucked this up and hurt you from the beginning and now I can't even . . ." He looked at her desperately, hoping that she understood him.

"You know . . ." she said, and nudged him playfully, trying to lighten his mood, "there's more to life than sex."

He laughed wryly and raised his eyebrows. "There _is_?" he asked.

"There is," she said. "There's surgeries . . . and tequila . . . and . . ." She pretended to run out of alternatives and gave a huge sigh. "Well, maybe there's not much more to life. But, you're going to get better soon, right?" she asked, assessing him to make sure he knew she was teasing him and wouldn't get upset. She noticed that he was shivering.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He swallowed. "I'm really cold," he said helplessly, because it had become pointless to try to pretend that he felt anything other than completely like shit.

"You should be in bed," she said and stood up.

"God, this is all so fucked up!" he sighed and slowly got up from the bathroom floor, one hand on the wall to steady himself.

"Okay?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, I guess. If you disregard nearly everything that word usually implies," he said morosely.

"Seriously," she said, recognizing that he needed further reassurance that he wasn't a disappointment to her. "I _love_ you. I want to cuddle in bed with you again. I want to 'literally sleep' with you. I haven't slept that well in . . . I can't remember when, and I want to do it again." She paused. "You know, there _are_ people . . . or so I'm told . . . who even go on dates before they fuck each other, sometimes more than one!"

"It's a very strange world out there," he said and laughed slightly. Despite his despondency, she somehow charmed him.

"It's okay that you feel bad," she went on. "Tonight, we can 'literally sleep' and tomorrow we'll see. Between now and then, you'll have to deal with the fact that I'm going to take care of you." She paused. "And now, we're going to bed."

He sighed. "I need to drink something," he said. He didn't want to because he knew it would just make him throw up. But he recognized the symptoms of dehydration and knew he was going that way.

She took his hand and led him back into the bedroom and helped him get comfortable in the bed, drawing the comforter over him.

Once he was lying down, he put one arm behind his head and watched her as she went over to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. On her way back to the bed, she brought back the trashcan.

She handed him the bottle. "You're probably cold partly because you're dehydrated," she said.

He laughed slightly. "Is that right, doctor?" he said. He opened the bottle and took a sip of water.

"Yes," she said. "You should take better care of yourself, you know. If you were your patient you'd be on painkillers and anti-emetics and . . . whatever." She didn't know much about oncology either, but she knew there were more options than he was allowing himself.

"'Anti-emetics and _whatever_?'" he said. "You want to revise that answer, Grey?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Okay. You can't do that," she said. "The old rules no longer apply. But this is a new one." She looked at him meaningfully. "You can't be an attending when we're not at the hospital and you're supposed to be my . . . my boyfriend!" She assessed him nervously to see if she had gone too far by using this term and was relieved when he gave no indication of this.

"I'm not being an attending," he replied. "I'm being an ass. It's what I do when I don't want to talk about something. And, hey, it worked . . . because we're not talking about 'whatever' any more." He drank a little more water and then sighed. "I'm so going to regret this when I start puking," he muttered.

"That," she said, indicating the trashcan, "is what this is for. Then you don't have go back into the bathroom and freeze."

"Yeah, but . . ." he made a disgusted face. He really didn't like the thought of her cleaning up after him.

"If you feel better, you can clean it up yourself," she said, easily understanding his unspoken objection. "If not, well I only just got done being an intern and I did much grosser things than that." She gave a slight grin. "You even assigned some of them to me as I remember," she said. She looked pleadingly at him. "Can I get back into bed now?" she asked, softly. "I'm exhausted and I . . . I want to be near you and feel you."

"Whenever you want," he said. "I'm all yours." He stopped himself from dwelling on the inevitable thought that this statement would be more meaningful if he were functional and tried to focus on what was possible right now.

She got back into bed and he turned on his side and pulled her towards him, his arm around her waist. As she pressed back against him, desperately wanting to feel his warmth, he turned slightly more towards her and gently entwined his leg around hers. She was so small compared to him that he could completely enfold her.

As she burrowed against his body, the increased pressure slightly exacerbated his pain for a few seconds, but he wanted her there and tried not to react.

She must have sensed something, because she asked, "Am I hurting you?"

"The exact opposite," he said, which was a lie and the truth at the same time, because he would trade a little soreness for the comfort her closeness provided. He kissed the back of her head and then nuzzled her hair. "You smell of . . . something flowery," he said. "It's kind of nice."

"Lavender," she said, already sleepy. "It's just my conditioner."

He rested his chin on the top of her head. "I love you, Grey," he said.

She smiled. She felt safe again. "I love you, too, McSteamy," she said.


	23. Five Weeks Later Friday Morning

Chapter 23, Five Weeks Later – Friday Morning

After a few hours of intermittently interrupted sleep, Mark woke up just after 6:30. They had shifted around in bed and he was lying on his back with Meredith more or less sprawled over him. Her right hand had found its way inside his clothes and was resting on his stomach and he covered her hand with his own, comforted by her proximity and the feel of her against his skin. But, as he touched her hand, she gave an abrupt twitch and started to . . . how the hell did such a delicate looking woman make such a god-awful noise? . . . snore!

He laughed slightly and gave her a soft shove. "Meredith," he whispered. "Can you not do that, please?" The snoring got louder.

"Seriously," he said, a little more forcefully, but still gentle. He shoved her softly again.

Vaguely aware of something nagging at her, Meredith moaned fractiously in her sleep and settled back into her dream.

_Her hand caught in his hair as she exhaled deeply, encouraging him, willing him not to stop. __He brushed the outer edges of her labia with his lips, a soft, delicate sensation that sent little shudders of pleasure running through her body.__Then he sucked her into his mouth with lingering, perfect pressure, and nudged her, ever so gently, with his teeth, to make room for his tongue.__She gasped at the first, sweet flick of his tongue, then relaxed deliciously as he explored her ready, swollen clit with warm, teasing laps._

The snoring got worse and Mark prodded her lightly. "Ssshh! . . . Mer . . . . Shut up, huh?" he said in her ear.

"Go 'way, Derek," she said and flailed her hand at him.

"Oh, that's really nice," he commented with dry amusement. "Call me nasty names on our first morning together, why don't you? Thank you _so_ much."

"What?" She wriggled out from under the comforter, half propped herself on his chest and peered at him blearily. "Mark?" she said and looked confused. "I thought . . . I was dreaming about you and . . ." Her confusion cleared and she grinned. "It was a _really_ good dream!" she said and, sighing happily, she slumped on him and went straight back to sleep -- without, thank God, resuming the snoring.

He felt a little better this morning; more like the normal, baseline shittiness anyway and less like wishing somebody would just shoot him. In the end, he had only thrown up once more and, after that, had managed to drink some water and keep it down. He had not left the trashcan for Meredith to clean up. Despite what she said about being an intern and wanting to take care of him—which, well fuck, was just . . . humbling, really—he thought that this, combined with not getting any action, would be just about enough to make anybody run away. And that was the last thing he wanted her to do.

It was already later than he would normally get up if he had surgeries. He thought about waking her again and asking her if she had to work but figured that would be "being an attending." Anyway, she had probably had enough of that kind of thing from Derek. Getting comfortable, he put his arm around her and pulled her closer to him and then went back to sleep.

* * *

_. . . "Crap!" Her BMW was in the drive, parked anyhow. "My . . . my mom's home . . . she's kind of a . . ." He looked down at the ground and kicked at it. Calling his mother a bitch probably wouldn't score him any points with Laura since she kept talking about the great relationship she had with hers. She was probably one of the most mind-numbing girls he had . . . dated, he guessed. Not that it really mattered much, since he didn't intend keeping it going any longer than it took to get inside her pants. All she talked about was the drama club, her family, and the guy — Mark knew him from football, and he was a total prick — that she still considered "the one," even though he had dumped her for a "slutty cheerleader." But she was hot and it was his 17__th__ birthday and his present to himself was that, if he could pull this off, she would be number 20 . . . so conversation wasn't especially high on his agenda._

_To reach the unused boathouse by the lake, they had to go through the back yard, which meant going through the kitchen. The kitchen had become his mother's favorite place to drink now because, that way, she could bore the help shitless while she got shitfaced. He had said this to her one time, intending the hostile sarcasm to upset her. Instead, it had provoked her anger and the stinging slap across the face it had earned him had at first shaken him badly. What was left when he got over this was an even greater feeling of contempt for her than he'd had before._

"_Listen," he said. "If she's there, just say 'hi' and then leave it, okay?" And, of-fucking-course, she was._

_He closed his eyes and sighed as she raised her glass to them and smiled, deceptively friendly. She studied Laura, not for the first time reminding him of a snake eyeing up its next meal. "Oh . . ." she said suggestively and he reflexively flinched at the sound of her voice. "Mark brought home a girlfriend!" He tried not to look as Laura stepped forward with her hand outstretched._

_She came from one of those families, like Derek's, where they taught you good manners. If they forced him to accompany them, he would watch his parents perform the expected rituals of society etiquette when they were under some kind of public scrutiny, usually related to his father's law firm; but he had no concept of ordinary courtesy and was constantly getting in shit for this._

_"Hi, Mrs. Sloan," Laura said, smiling like she was talking to a normal person. "It's really nice to meet you."_

_His mother looked briefly at him and, wryly, raised an eyebrow. She glanced dismissively at the girl's still proffered hand and affectedly ignored it. "It is?" she asked. "I suppose you're going to say next that he's 'told you so much about me,'" she laughed affectedly. "That's what his father's girls always say to me, anyway . . . and he's turning out to be so like his father." She shot him a caustic look and then turned back to Laura. "I suppose you know why he's brought you here, dear?" she asked._

_He swallowed and tried to interrupt. "Laura, we should get going . . ." he said as his mother got up and sauntered over to him._

_"I guess, though," she said, and ran her fingers through his hair in a proprietary way that sent a chill of revulsion through him, "he is sort of gorgeous. You could do worse."_

Meredith's loud snoring broke into his dream and he woke up. He was in a cold sweat and his heart was pounding as he tried to shake off the unwanted memory that he had, until now, pushed to the back of his mind.

Going over the dream in his head, he remembered that, in the end, he hadn't even gotten laid; he had no longer had the heart for it. Especially when Laura had made some stupid remark about his mother being "so beautiful for a woman of her age"—which was 37, two years younger than he was now. And, he supposed, she had been beautiful, if you didn't know her; kind of like Addison's friend Savvy—who he had never really been able to warm to because of this – but taller and more overtly seductive, all the fucking time, to everyone. After that, he'd told Laura to go home and done a little underage drinking with a couple of guys from the football team because Derek refused to join him.

Even at this distance—and he hadn't had any contact with them since he graduated from med school—he still passionately hated his family. He had tried so hard to forget that he was related to them; substituting Derek and his family had allowed him to maintain the illusion that he was something approaching normal. But he had screwed that up; ironically—no, tragically—because he had acted on one of the few impulses in his life that he meant with all his heart.

He could remember . . . because it all just came flooding back, now that he was so far over the fucking edge that he didn't even need to be drugged to relive his childhood . . . his grandfather, stinking of vintage cognac, leaning towards him when he was, like, six years old and saying "blood will out, boy." And he guessed that it fucking would, even though to this day he had no idea why the old bastard had felt the need to share this depressing cliché. Why _now_, he thought, just when he believed he could move on, did he have to be reminded of where he came from and how damaged he was? "Fuck!" he said despairingly and banged his head against the pillow. All the over-priced therapy in the world was never going to exorcise this shit. He sat up wearily and leaned dispiritedly against the headboard. His movements disturbed Meredith and she woke up.

"Mark. . . ?" she said.

"Hey," he said curtly, with none of the usual softness and added flatly, "You realize that you snore, right?"

She opened her eyes fully, concerned at his abrupt tone. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it's awful. It's genetic, apparently. Did I keep you awake?"

"Yeah, well, a lot of undesirable crap is genetic," he muttered angrily, not really directing the remark at her. So what did he get . . . his father's genes for being a cold, distant asshole or his mother's for being a sadistic upscale drunk? He sighed. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean . . ."

She shook her head briefly. She could sense that she wasn't the cause of whatever was bothering him and she didn't need an apology. Sitting up and leaning into him slightly, she asked "Is everything okay?"

"No," he said. He inhaled deeply and looked down. "No, it's not. You shouldn't . . . you shouldn't be with me," he said dismally. "You deserve something better."

At first she didn't know what to say. The mood swings of this relationship were almost too much for her to take and her heart sank once again. Part of her wanted to yell at him, because she had been happy and now he had turned it into a drama again; and part of her wanted to . . . love him, to make him feel her love, because he so obviously needed it.

"Is this . . . is this about Der—?" she ventured.

"No," he interrupted her. "It's not about Derek. It's about me. You deserve something better than me and you should get out before you start feeling something . . . something that you can't recover from."

Seriously?! There's something else now? she thought, fighting the urge to smack him upside the head. She was not exactly at her best when she first woke up and this was just too disheartening for the first few minutes of consciousness.

"I already feel something," she said. "And _seriously_ . . . do we have to do this _every_ time we see each other, or could we maybe make it every _other_ time?"

It occurred to her then that maybe all this was because he felt horrible and she wondered if she was being unfair. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "How are you doing this morning?"

He looked directly at her again, and the transparent pain that showed in his eyes almost made her wince. "You know, I can say, 'I'm not going to be that guy' as much as I want." He hadn't been listening to her and was lost in his own thoughts. "But the problem is that I _am_ that guy. I hurt people. I hurt whoever gets close to me. If you stay with me, eventually I'm going to do some fucked up thing that'll make you hate me and . . . I can't handle that. Because, your ex is right; whenever I screw up someone else's life, I screw up my own just as much and, even if it's my fault, it hurts too much."

She didn't know how to react. Why can't you understand that _this_ is what hurts me? she thought, frustrated that she didn't feel able to voice this out loud.

Looking down again, he sighed and took her hand and began to play gently with her fingers. "I'm not lying when I say that I love you," he said softly. "You make me feel like the good guy. You make me feel like it's possible for me to be loved and to love someone back. You do that just by being you and . . . liking me. I don't even understand why, but it's how I feel." He paused. "Believe me, if I could make myself someone who could live up to all that, I would, in a heartbeat. But I can't. Because, seriously, if a 400-dollar-an-hour shrink can't make me change, who the hell can? I'm damaged goods, Meredith."

He dropped her hand and looked at her intently. "Please leave me. I don't want to tell you to go. I don't want to be less than honest with you and, if I'm honest, I have to say that I want you to stay. But, please . . . do this for me."

"No," she said softly but determinedly.

"So . . . what?" he demanded harshly. "You want to stay with me while I hurt myself and you and screw around with other women? Call up Addison! Ask her opinion on how that'd feel." It wasn't true that your past didn't define you. It did, from the first breath you took on the first day of your life and, after that, it never fucking let up. But he so much wished that it didn't, because he so wished that he could love Meredith in the way that he wanted to.

She took a deep breath. "Everything's not your fault," she said. "And I don't want to leave you. For the ten thousandth freaking time—I love you."

"Why?" he challenged her. "You don't even know me."

"I _do_ know you," she said. "I know you enough, anyway."

She paused and gathered her thoughts . . . her feelings, really . . . before saying, "I know how much care you take with patients and how you reassure them. I know how you challenge me to be a better doctor. I know how much you want to be friends with Derek again, although I also know that you're angry and hurt at him. I know you think everyone's right about you and that you're just a manwhore, but I know better. I know that underneath all the ego you like to let people see, you're nearly as insecure as I am." She smiled and added softly, "And I know you love me, because I've felt it."

He closed his eyes and sighed. "Did you ever consider that what you 'felt' was just me hitting on you?" he growled bitterly. "Or that your faith in me might be misplaced? Because—"

Completely on impulse, she reached up and gently kissed his face. For one brief second she saw surprise and pleasure register in his eyes and she thought he almost returned her kiss. But he stopped himself and resumed his attitude of self-disgust and turned his head away from her again.

Sighing, Meredith pushed herself away from him and sat up, hugging her knees against her chest. "You know," she said, "most of the time I don't feel like a grown up. Sure . . . I act like one. I try to make people believe I'm one. But I don't. I feel like an eight year old kid. I get to play dress up and I get to play doctor and I get to play 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours.' I even got a handsome prince for a while, until he turned into a frog." She had hoped he would react to this, but he continued to look away from her, a slight grunt the only indication that he was listening.

The last time she made herself this vulnerable—with Derek, when Addison first showed up—she had been . . . overlooked. Her acute sensitivity to rejection made it almost physically painful for her to plead with him to let her love him and yet she was willing to try because it seemed, right now, like the most important thing in her life.

She swallowed. "Any time you walk into a room," she said softly, "that room changes for me. You—your presence, your voice, your scent—change the world I live in. Instead of being in a place where I feel like a mess with food in my hair and mommy and daddy issues and a life that's only good for giving the nurses something to gossip about, I feel . . . normal. I feel like a surgeon. I feel like a woman. I don't want to go back to the other place. If you make me, _that's_ how you'll hurt me. The other stuff I can deal with . . . if it happens." She took a breath. "I feel like I fit with you. You're . . . there for me; you encourage me; you trust me and I trust you; you're honest with me . . . sometimes painfully, but that's a good thing . . . and you never judge me. The only other person I've ever met who understands me, accepts me, makes me feel comfortable that I'm me—all of me, not just the parts that aren't difficult to take—is Cristina." She paused and smiled slightly. "And I tried going on honeymoon with her and, well . . . she's just not my type." She thought, although she couldn't be sure, that he laughed slightly at this. "I know my judgment normally sucks about this kind of thing. I know I was wrong about Derek and I know I sleep with all the wrong men and I know I have intimacy issues—"

"Hey," he interrupted her softly. He turned towards her and reached out as if to stroke her face but then pulled back. "This is not about you, Meredith. It's about . . . Oh, god, I'm sorry," he groaned, stopping himself before he got to the end of the ritual break-up line, and looked down at his hands.

"— but I want you" she continued undeterred. "I want to try with you. Even if we're both messed up beyond reason I want to see if my instinct that we can work it out together is right. Wouldn't you like to try?" she asked and then sighed. "Okay, I'm done now," she said, shrugging. "I have no more words. All I can do from now on, if you'll let me, is show you how I feel."

After what seemed to her like an interminable pause, he turned to look at her. "You know you wanted to make a deal last night?" he said. "About . . . " he grimaced a little but followed it with a brief smile "crying?"

She nodded.

"Well, here's a different one, if you're up for it." He raised an eyebrow questioningly and she nodded again. "I'll stop pushing you away and talking crap, if you'll agree to call me on it the second I do something stupid." He paused. "Deal?"

A smile spread across her face. "Oh, yeah . . . " she easily agreed. "Deal."

He narrowed his eyes and said, more or less playfully, "And while we're making deals, could you stop calling me McSteamy? . . . I really hate that damn name." He'd always thought that they might as well just go right ahead and call him "Addison's booty call" to his face.

"You do?" she asked, slightly hurt. "I made it up," she said. "It was my creation. It was supposed to be . . . " she looked him up and down as though she was undressing him in her head "appreciative! It suits you. You _are _McSteamy. And I forgot . . ." she grinned, "that's another reason I love you . . . because you're insanely hot!"

"Yeah?" he said, pleased but a little uncomfortable, because he didn't feel anything close to 'insanely hot' right now. He shrugged. "Okay. You convinced me. I hope you're happy, because you're stuck with me now."

She looked at the clock, which said 12:09. She hoped Cristina, who was covering her shift, had managed to get in on a good surgery. "Oh, thank God!" she said. "Because I'm hungry. Are you hungry?" she asked. "Could we order breakfast?"

He opened the drawer of the nightstand, pulled out the room service menu and handed it to her. "Not really," he said. "But I haven't eaten in . . .what? . . . 30 hours? So, yeah, order me something."

"Blueberry pancakes?" she suggested as she turned the pages of the menu. She had no idea what to order, but she liked pancakes and she figured they might be something he could eat right now.

"'S Fine," he said. "And get a pot of coffee, will you?"

Meredith raised an eyebrow and sighed playfully. "Coffee, Dr Sloan?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," Mark said, confused at her tone. He had no idea what she meant.

"Are you sure it's_ me_ you want for that? Wouldn't . . . oh, I don't know . . . _Alex_ be more what you're looking for?"

He rolled his eyes, finally understanding. "It's just coffee, Mer," he said. "And . . . I've fetched coffee for _you_. I distinctly remember it because—"

"It was such a rare occurrence?" she laughed. "It's fine. I'll order the coffee. But next time we're at work I'll expect at least . . ." She considered. "Ooh . . . a double caramel latte."

He made a disgusted expression. "You'd drink that?" he asked and shook his head. "I guess you're not the woman I thought you were."

"If you love me," she insisted, "you'll buy me a caramel latte."

He paused and looked down before asking tentatively, "Does that mean, if you get me coffee, you love _me_?"

"Well, of course," she said, and added softly. "_Anything_ I do for you from now on will be because I love you."

He paused again and then looked up at her and grinned. "So . . . when Karev brings me coffee, should I be worried?"

Without saying anything, Meredith leaned over and kissed him softly. "Yes," she said, wanting to help him deflect his discomfort.

"Good to know," he said before gently returning her kiss.


	24. Five Weeks Later Friday Afternoon

Chapter 24, Five Weeks Later – Friday Afternoon

A typical Seattle rainstorm was blowing and Meredith was sitting in bed listening to the rain. Mark slept next to her, his body molded around hers, one arm draped across her lap. The dark gray sky, the rain lashing the windows, and the soft lamplight that suffused the hotel room combined to make Meredith feel as though she was in a cocoon where only she and Mark mattered and where she was happy. She laughed at herself a little wryly. The word 'happy' was rarely in her vocabulary—usually only when prefixed with 'un-' or appended to 'not freaking possible to be.' Mark really had changed the world she lived in and it was one where happiness was no longer quite so elusive as it had been.

"I love you," she whispered softly to Mark, not wanting to wake him but needing to say it. "And I love that you love me."

The rain became heavier and the wind rattled the hotel room windows. She sighed contentedly. She was used to the rain; it was a constant backdrop to her life and she never paid much attention to it. It was just . . . there: wet and unremarkable. But today the rain belonged to the same changed world that she did and today it was beautiful.

* * *

"You know what? I ate breakfast and I didn't puke," Mark mumbled sleepily as he woke up. He rolled onto his back and squinted unfocusedly at Meredith. "Fuck, I'm sorry. Sick people are gross," he apologized. "I can assure you that I'm normally a hell of a lot more fun to be in bed with."

"Well, I already like being in bed with you," she said. "And I'm happy for you that you didn't puke. That's good."

"You're a very tolerant woman," he said and then asked, "Is that rain?" as he pushed himself up, a little painfully, into a sitting position.

"It is," she replied dreamily. "It's beautiful today, don't you think?"

"_You're_ beautiful," he said. "The rain I could easily do without."

"You're a cynic," she teased him and slapped him playfully on the arm. "A cynical, jaded New Yorker who—"

"Who happens to love you," he said quietly, adding, with a slight smirk, when she widened her eyes and smiled at him, "Oh . . . so not completely cynical and jaded, huh?"

"No, " she conceded softly. "You know, I like this hotel room. It's comfortable and they bring food, and . . ." she shrugged, "I just like being here with you."

"Well, don't get too used to it," he said and grinned. "I bought a house a couple of days ago." He still liked telling people this and telling her was especially gratifying. It made him feel like the kind of guy who might live up to her expectations.

"Congratulations!" she said, genuinely pleased for him, but added just a little snarkily, "Callie told me you were looking for one."

"How come everybody knows every damn detail of my life?" he asked incredulously. "Did she happen to tell you where it is and how much it cost?"

"No. She said you went to look at a house with Addison, that's all." Meredith twitched an eyebrow.

"Except she kind of implied that Addison was here for a booty call." She paused. "Cristina says I'm crazy, but I think Callie hates me."

He sighed. He knew Callie could be a bitch about Meredith, but she was probably the closest thing to a friend he had in Seattle right now. For her and Meredith to be antagonistic towards each other would make life even more complicated than it already was. And, if he thought about it, he had to be grateful for Callie's bitching because, without it, he would probably never have realized how he felt about Meredith.

"I slept with Callie one time," he said, wanting to be honest, although he left out the part about pressuring her to do it again. "We're sort of friends now and I doubt that she _hates_ you. She's probably stressed. You could cut her a little slack—I mean, she has to put up with O'Malley."

"I slept with George," Meredith blurted out. "Only once though and it was months ago and—" She stopped when she realized that Mark wasn't listening to her, relieved that this allowed her to drop the subject before she said something inappropriate and unfair about George.

Mark was remembering that Callie had called him "dirty" after they'd slept together. He had no real idea why and he knew she hadn't exactly meant it as a compliment. But he still wished he was capable of doing something dirty with Meredith right now, instead of being so fucked-over by this emasculating disease and its god-awful treatment that he couldn't get it up if his life depended on it. Talking was fine, but it wasn't enough. Sex was his thing; with a woman that he loved it could be . . . hell, _he_ could be . . . fucking awesome. And he needed to _show_ Meredith, with his body, how much he loved her and to _feel_ her body telling him that she loved him too.

His focus returned to Meredith and he narrowed his eyes at her. "Did you just say you slept with O'Malley?" he asked her.

She nodded tentatively.

"So O'Malley gets to screw you and I don't? Well, isn't that just the last fucking straw?" he said, frustrated beyond belief, and got up off the bed too quickly, causing a rush of nausea, dizziness and stomach pain. He groaned as he was forced to put out a hand to steady himself against the headboard and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said miserably, running his other hand over his face. "I'm really sorry. This just gets to me sometimes." He opened his eyes and searched her face for understanding.

"It's okay," she reassured him. "It's fine. I understand and . . . I'm _fine_."

Yeah, right! he thought bitterly. That's just fucking great! It wasn't like he'd never said he was "fine" and he knew exactly what it meant. He sighed. "I need to take a shower," he said despondently and went into the bathroom.

* * *

Meredith poured herself some lukewarm coffee and took it and sat cross-legged on the floor, her back resting against the bed. She _was_ fine. _Seriously_. And she wasn't impatient. _Really_, she wasn't. She'd said could wait and she could. She didn't want to push him. She knew that he felt bad and she meant it when she said it didn't matter. But . . . God, she wanted him and . . . damn it, she wanted sex! She couldn't help thinking that he was over-estimating her requirements and under-estimating how understanding she would be. There had to be something they could do that wasn't perfect, hot McSteamy sex but would still be . . . sex. She'd been waiting so long now she thought she would probably come if he just growled in her ear that he wanted to fuck her. God, even the memory of him saying it at Joe's that evening—a week and a freaking half ago!—made her squirm. And, seriously, a week and a half's fantasy foreplay was enough to make anybody horny, wasn't it?

"Okay, that's enough!" she said out loud and stood up. 'The beast,' as Izzie liked to call it, had to be fed and they would have to work out a way of feeding it. She stripped off the few items of clothing she was still wearing and followed Mark into the bathroom.

* * *

He was in the shower. She slid open the shower door a crack, not feeling quite as confident as she had when she'd left the bedroom. He had his eyes closed and she could tell he was enjoying the sensation of the powerful jet of scalding water cascading over his body. And her breath caught in her throat as she watched him. Because he was hers and he was really here with her and because he was just awesomely freaking gorgeous!

Her hand was still on the shower door and she must have put too much pressure on it, because suddenly it gave way and slid all the way open and she lost her balance for a second. The door clattered and she let out a little noise of surprise and embarrassment and Mark opened his eyes, startled by the sound.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

"I slipped," she said.

"Well, I can see that," he said. "You should be more careful when you go sneaking around guys' bathrooms." He smiled.

She smiled back, unable to stop herself staring at him. "Wow!" she said and swallowed. "I knew I was right about you being McSteamy." That's seriously the best you can do? she berated herself. She'd wanted to seem irresistibly fuckable, not like a teenager with a crush.

"Aw shucks, ma'am," he said self-consciously. Her admiration was flattering but it embarrassed him. He hadn't worked out in weeks and he'd lost weight and he didn't feel good enough for her desire. Especially when she was standing there, loving him and wanting him and looking so breathtakingly hot that, if his fucked-up body worked, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from pulling her into the shower and pushing her up against the wall and—shit! What was the use?

"So. . ." Meredith flirted. "I'm feeling kind of dirty. Do you think I could join you in there?"

Mark nodded dryly and smiled. "Dirty, huh?" he asked. "You know, women usually leave the obvious come-ons to me."

She shrugged. "Well," she said. "I guess there's a first time for everything. And," she licked her lips a little and smirked alluringly "obviousness is my objective right now. It's my intention to be obvious. I _really_ want to touch you and I _really _want to you know that."

He sighed. "You can shower with me if you want," he said. "But nothing's changed. I still can't—"

Meredith stepped into the shower stall and slid the door closed again.

"Seriously, Meredith. I can't," he said. "I . . ."

"Ssshh," she said. "It's okay. How about if I . . . wash you?" She looked around for soap or shower gel and, finding a plastic bottle that looked expensive and masculine, held it up for his approval.

He nodded and sighed again. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. But something about her got to him; he couldn't resist her and he gave in.

"What can I say? I'm all yours,' he surrendered. "Go ahead and have your not-so-wicked way with me."

"Good," she said, squeezing shower gel into her hand and making lather. "And no talking. Talking's not necessary for this. In fact, talking gets in the way."

She stretched up and put her soapy hands on his broad, firm shoulders and planted a kiss on his mouth followed by a little, seductive flick of her tongue across his lower lip. "Kissing, however," she said, looking into his eyes, "is greatly encouraged. Although, could you maybe try to be a little less tall?"

Before he could reply, she stretched up again and put her arms around his neck and drew him down to her level. Holding her body close to his, she licked his lower lip again, this time more firmly and lingering just a little, and then parted his lips with her tongue. He shuddered very slightly and then responded by running his tongue along the inside of her upper lip in a way that made her quiver. And then he returned her kiss—hard, passionately and with a hungry longing that took her breath away.

"Oh," she said softly when he finally pulled slowly away from her. "That was _nice_."

"Yeah?" he asked.

His eyes held a questioning uncertainty that was so unlike him it tugged at her heart.

"You think I've still got it then?" He was only partly flirting; a part of him meant it.

"Oh, yeah," she breathed, smiling at him. "You've definitely still got it. Now, where was I?"

She pressed her hands up against his powerful chest and began to massage him in slow, rhythmic circles. He closed his eyes and relaxed into her touch and, without stopping the movement of her hands, she took the opportunity to really look at him. He was . . . she could only repeat herself, because nothing else seemed adequate . . . just awesomely freaking gorgeous. She had never seen or touched a man like him. If his body was less good since the cancer then she could only imagine . . . well, she kind of _had_ imagined, quite a lot really . . . what he must have looked like before!

She paused briefly to squeeze some more shower gel into her hand and mix it with a little water. Looking beyond her rapt, sex-starved awe for a moment, she found that she could see signs of his illness. His body was still strong but he was quite definitely thinner, and there were slight hollows and indentations where she would have expected definition. She began to soap the rest of his upper body, her caresses growing gentler when she reached his abdomen, out of concern that she might cause him pain. His muscles were incredible, but she got the sense that what would have been perfect, hard flatness was now just slightly too flat, even almost concave. She bent down and tenderly kissed his stomach and he opened his eyes and looked at her wonderingly and gently ran his hand through her hair.

"I'm so sorry about what's happened to you," she whispered. "It's so unfair."

Moved by feelings that he had no idea how to express in words, Mark took her hand and kissed it softly, then brushed his lips across her fingers and took the index finger gently into his mouth. His tongue played invitingly with her fingertip and she gasped, stunned that something so simple could be so achingly sexy. He overwhelmed her. He overwhelmed her senses and he overwhelmed her heart. Driven by the need to kiss him again, she cupped the side of his face with one hand while the other followed the contours of his back. Pulling him towards her, she kissed him slowly, softly and deeply and, as she did so, he groaned with pleasure and relief.

"I guess I must like you, Dr Grey," he murmured, and she smiled as she felt his erection push against her hip.

Beginning at the hollow beneath her left ear, his mouth drifted sensually down her neck, biting her softly and leaving a trail of small kisses, until he briefly paused at her collarbone and nuzzled her for a few ecstatic moments. She let out a slow breath and closed her eyes, melting as he moved down to her breast and grazed her swollen, sensitized nipple with his lips a few times, before taking it into his mouth and making soft, wet circles with his tongue. Curving his hand around her other breast, he tweaked her playfully, and then ran his hand down her slender body in a firm caress, before sliding it with gentle force between her legs. His mouth still sucking and gently biting at her breast, he lightly stroked her inner thighs and then ran his fingers through her soft, curling hair and gave a little, teasing tug, which made her laugh delightedly. Then, mirroring the movement of his tongue against her breast, his thumb began to trace circles around her clit as his fingers explored her wetness, then carefully entered her.

Her hands travelled to his hips and she felt for him and, as she stroked him and enjoyed his hardness, he inhaled sharply. She ran her fingers along the length of his erection, swirled them tantalizingly around the head, then trailed back down and began to rub him slowly. His deep moan vibrated against her and, after one last flick of his tongue against her nipple, he raised his head from her breast and leaned into her neck. "Fuck, Meredith," he growled in her ear. "That's just . . . ah, fuck . . ."

"You like that?" she asked. In response he just sighed and pushed his fingers deeper inside her and increased the wonderful pressure on her clit.

As his arousal grew and she smelled his musky scent, her own longing built, and she rubbed him with firmer, quicker strokes, at the same time grinding her pelvis against his hand. She had waited so long for this and she wanted him so much, she didn't need time. She was ready.

Mark heaved a sigh. "Are you . . . ?" he managed to get out. "Because, I'm going to . . .". Unable to wait for her response, he gave a massive shudder and then came explosively as she experienced her own exquisite orgasm. He dropped his head onto her shoulder and rested there a second, giving her a brief, grateful kiss, before slowly collapsing to his knees and leaning his forehead against her thigh. He was exhausted.

"Are you okay," she asked softly, concerned for him.

"I think you may have killed me," he whispered hoarsely. "But, if you did, it was a fuck of a good way to die."

Relieved, Meredith laughed gently and ran her fingers through his wet hair.

"We should probably clean up a little," she said and retrieved the shower gel. With effort, he stood up and then allowed her to wash off his body and her own, while he kissed her hair, over and over, wanting her to understand that this meant "thank you."

After a few moments spent just standing together and holding each other under the stream of water, Meredith turned off the shower and stepped out. Holding out a large, fluffy, white towel, she said. "Why don't you come out here and let me dry you off? Then, maybe we should go back to bed."


	25. Six Weeks Later

_A/N: Brilliantly beta'd by DeniseSB. _

* * *

Chapter 25, Six Weeks Later

"Other than what we discussed about Scandinavian Contemporary," Mark shook his head, wondering that he'd submitted to looking through the samples, but pleased with his choice of style, "I don't know what kind of furniture I want. Isn't that why I hired you?" This was just surreal. Being inside Seattle Grace used to mean being a surgeon. Now it meant lying on a bed in oncology being pumped with shit while an interior decorator harangued him on his cell phone about the furnishings of his house.

The woman sighed meaningfully at the other end of the phone.

"Am I pissing you off?" Mark asked sardonically. "Because, believe me, you're having the same effect on me, but last time I checked I was the one paying the bills."

He couldn't deal with this. His stomach hurt like hell and the fucking headaches had started back up and he honestly didn't know what kind of furniture he wanted and wished she would just do her damn job and send him an invoice when she'd finished it.

Letting out a sigh, he tried to be conciliatory, "Listen. I'm pretty easy to please. Just get . . . whatever . . . as long as it's the design we agreed on. Except . . . maybe a really big bed for the master bedroom."

She started to nitpick with him about budgets and price ranges and he cut her off, saying, "Whatever it takes. I don't give a . . . I don't care," a response that, as usual with these people, engendered a gratifying silence and change in attitude, although he was a little concerned that, in this case, it might also cause the acquisition of something expensive but tasteless, like the life sized antique statue of a dog a patient of his in New York had once tried to foist on him as a gift.

As he hung up, Julia Lindstrom came into the room.

"Well, hi," she said, smiling. "I just thought I'd stop by and check on you; see how things are going; do a little doctor-patient bonding."

He raised his eyebrows and smiled dryly. "Bitch," he said. She knew he couldn't stand being called a patient.

"Surgery jock," she retorted, pulling a sarcastic face.

Mark sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Julia," he began uncertainly and his mood became serious. "Is there something . . . should I be worried about . . . ?" He trailed off and sighed again.

As she had gotten to know him, Julia found that she really liked Mark. He had become one of her favorite patients. But that didn't make it any easier to talk to him about his cancer. His stoical, macho evasiveness—summed up in the words "I'm fine"—made it incredibly difficult to have meaningful discussions with him. Typical goddamn surgeon, she thought wryly. She recognized that if he'd managed to utter the tentative, attenuated statements he just had, he must be really worried about something.

She looked him in the eye. "Spill," she demanded. "I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong." She sat down on the end of the bed, crossed her legs elegantly, and waited.

Mark crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her appraisingly. "You know that you look like a Swedish porn actress, right?" he stalled, giving her a weary smirk. "Especially with the short skirt and high heels under the doctor costume."

Julia rolled her eyes and began to tap her pen against the file she was holding. "I had a meeting with a pharmaceutical company rep," she said matter-of-factly. "And my lab coat is not a 'doctor costume.' And, no, before you ask, I never wear it with only black lace underwear, much less a thong. Anything else? Or can we talk about whatever it is that's concerning you now?"

"I'm sorry," he said uncomfortably and briefly glanced down at his hands, before fixing her with a look of such desperation that her heart went out to him. "I bought a house," he said, shrugging awkwardly. "And . . . there's this woman that I . . . " He paused. "Talking crap to you is so much easier than asking . . . than asking if I'm going to die."

She didn't know quite what to say. When she'd first seen his case, she'd had very little expectation that he would survive. But, once she'd put him on the more aggressive protocol, she'd been astonished by how well the treatment worked for him. Now she was honestly able to be optimistic.

"Mark," she said softly. "I've told you before that you're doing really well. I've shown you all your labs and CT scans and you've seen for yourself that you're doing well. The metastasis is receding and the primary tumor's getting smaller. As far as the trial's guidelines go, for six weeks into the treatment, you're a little ahead of the curve." She smiled. "Congratulations, Dr. Sloan. You're in partial remission," she said.

He nodded, not really convinced. "That all sounds good. . . " he mumbled.

"But. . . " Julia prompted him.

"I feel so crappy that I can't function half the time," he finally allowed himself to say. "Every time I have therapy, I feel like fucking death warmed over. And, I know that's the side effects and I expect that. But," he sighed "recently, there's no let-up between sessions; the symptoms never go away. I woke up this morning with a god-awful stomachache and the mother of all headaches and I puke and I can't. . ." He paused and looked down again. "I met this woman and I can't. . ." He groaned. "I'm totally fucked up. So, I wondered if I should be worried. If there's maybe something you've missed, some other labs you should run?" he asked quietly.

Julia thought that this was probably the longest statement she had ever heard him make. "I'm so glad you felt able to say that," she said. "But, I can assure you that we have all the data we need. I promise you that what you're experiencing is side effects. Nasty side effects, I'll grant you, but side effects."

He looked up at her almost imploringly. "You're serious?" he asked.

"I'm serious," she confirmed. "I would let you know immediately if anything were wrong. I would do that for any patient, but especially for another doctor. But, for now, just trust me. You're doing great." She smiled. "And I have very high hopes of writing up your case and getting published and being the star of the clinical trial documentation!"

He laughed slightly. "So maybe you could prescribe something?" he asked her. "Painkillers, anti-emetics . . . whatever . . . because the pain and the throwing up are too fucking depressing."

"Well, ain't love grand!" Julia teased him. "This woman you've met must really be good for you if being with her makes you actually want to take care of yourself! I'm very impressed."

* * *

"Stop smiling, Meredith!" Cristina insisted. They were at Joe's, sitting together at the bar. She took a long drink of her beer. Still swallowing, she said, "Seriously. Stop it. It's . . . perverse."

Meredith raised an eyebrow. "You're not much of a friend," she remonstrated playfully. "You don't like it when I whine and you don't like it when I'm happy. I can't do anything right! Anyway, shouldn't you be feeling smug? I'm smiling because I did what you wanted me to." Her smile got even bigger and Cristina gave a disgusted snort.

"I wanted you to sleep with him so you'd stop moping. Not so you could smile at me weirdly and flaunt your post-coital blissfulness!" She raised an eyebrow. "Anyway, I've changed my mind. I think he's bad for you."

"Liar!" Meredith said happily and threw a peanut at Cristina.

"Slut!" Cristina retorted. "And we're throwing food, now? What are we, five?"

Alex slumped down on the bar stool next to Cristina and rested his elbows on the bar.

"Hey," he said, tiredly, indicating to Joe that he wanted a beer.

Cristina glared at him and Meredith smiled broadly.

Alex leaned towards Cristina. "She tanked?" he asked, meaning Meredith.

Cristina smiled sardonically. "She's _happy_," she said.

"Yeah?" Alex said. "What's that like?" He took a large swig of the beer Joe had just put in front of him.

"Great!" Meredith said. "You should definitely try it." While Cristina simultaneously said "Insufferable—" before her mouth dropped open as she stared at the door.

"Seriously, Meredith. You _didn't_!"

"Didn't what?" Meredith, who had her back turned towards the door, asked.

Alex looked in the same direction as Cristina and grunted. "Aw, c'mon Mer!" he said. "You don't think I spend enough time with him at work?"

Before she could answer, Meredith heard "Hey," softly murmured in her ear and felt the leather of Mark's jacket and his familiar warmth as he wrapped his arms around her from behind. He kissed her cheek and blew softly in her ear and she twisted around on her stool, put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

Alex and Cristina exchanged smirks.

"Hey, yourself!" She smiled at him and brushed her fingers through his hair affectionately. "Did it go okay?" she asked, referring to the immunotherapy.

Mark shrugged. "It's not an experience I would recommend," he said and smiled tiredly. "But apparently I'm in partial remission."

Meredith kissed him again. "That's great," she whispered.

"And . . ." he said, "she gave me drugs." He grinned. "Damn good ones! At least, they more or less stop the pain and the endless puking . . ."

Cristina turned to Alex and made a disgusted face. "Oh that seriously sucks out loud!" she snarked under her breath. "We have to listen this, why, exactly?"

Alex shrugged. "The guy exists in his own universe. He probably doesn't even see us. Still, he's pretty fucked up right now . . . you could go easy on him."

". . . and I'm mellowed-out enough that I can sit here sober and watch you drink without wanting to lay someone out . . . Karev, for example." Mark briefly turned his attention to Alex and Cristina. "Because yes, I can see and hear you."

Meredith reached up and stroked his face and kissed him again.

"Get a room, Mer! We're trying to drink here," Cristina said.

"Dr. Yang," Mark acknowledged her dryly.

"Oh, just be nice!" said Meredith, directing this at all three of them. In response, they all looked at her incredulously, and she threw up her hands and said "Whatever!" before calling Joe over and ordering a shot of tequila.

"I'll get that," Mark said. "You want something?" he asked the others reluctantly

"Yes. Another one of these," Cristina said ungraciously, pointing to her beer.

"'S fine, dude" Alex muttered equivocally. "I can—"

"_Dude_," Mark interrupted him. "Believe me; buying you a drink is preferable to listening to you tell me why you don't want one."

Alex shrugged and Mark bought the drinks adding, resignedly, a glass of water for himself.

"So, Karev," Mark asked as he sat down on the stool next to Meredith, "You were too sick to turn up for my gynecomastia surgery last week?"

Meredith sighed, anticipating an evening of unending snark, and knocked back her tequila.

Alex groaned. "I knew that would come up," he said. Mark raised his eyebrows.

"I had the flu, okay? I came into work and I met Bailey in the elevator and she said I was 'disgusting' and 'contagious' and sent me home."

"Bailey, huh?" Mark said, nodding slightly. "It's just that . . . well, I showed up. I guess I've only got cancer though," he smirked.

"Cancer's not contagious," Alex defended himself morosely, feeling dumb and tactless as soon as he'd said it.

Cristina snorted and Meredith sighed again.

Mark smiled dryly. "Good to know your years of med school weren't entirely wasted."

"Had you considered doing target practice in the men's room," Cristina asked Mark and Alex with feigned politeness, "and sparing those of us who practice real medicine your plastic surgery repartee?"

Meredith got up from her stool. "_I'm_ going to use the bathroom," she announced as she walked away. "Could we all try to get along before I get back?"

The others sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments and Mark, suddenly tired without Meredith, leaned his elbows on the bar and buried his head in his hands.

"Fuck," he heard Karev say, followed by Yang getting up and saying, "I'm going to find Mer."

"Double scotch, single malt, please Joe." Mark looked up abruptly when he heard Derek's voice. He was standing on the other side of Karev.

Almost unable to find his voice Mark said 'Hey," and smiled at Derek.

Derek raised an eyebrow. "Mark," he said curtly and turned away with the intention of sitting somewhere else.

"You want to sit here for a minute?" Mark said, kind of hating himself for his need for reconciliation. "We could kiss and make up," he added with friendly sarcasm, smiling as openly as he could manage.

Alex, watching the exchange, winced slightly at Derek's total absence of response. And Mark sighed and looked down, defeated, knowing what was coming.

"I don't think so," Derek said coldly. "In fact," he said, draining his drink in one gulp and audibly setting the glass back on the bar, "I was just leaving." He nodded at Alex, "Dr. Karev," threw some money on the bar and walked towards the exit.

"Whoa!" Alex said, clumsily trying to lighten the mood. "Crashed and burned, dude!"

Still looking down, Mark sighed and then said in a low voice, "Screw him."

"He's an ass," Alex agreed.

Mark looked up. "Yeah," he said distractedly. "He's an ass." He caught Joe's attention. It wouldn't hurt to have one fucking drink, would it? "Double scotch, single malt," he said and, when the drink came, drank it off in one go, the burn of the alcohol mitigating his feeling of . . . he closed his eyes, unwilling to admit this even to himself . . . abandonment.

"I can't live like that any more," he said. "A person can't live in a goddamn trap." He looked directly at Alex. "Screw Derek Shepherd," he said and tried to convince himself that he meant it.


	26. Seven Weeks Later

_A/N: Brilliantly beta'd by DeniseSB._

* * *

Chapter 26, Seven Weeks Later

Mark was sitting on the floor of a supply closet hoping like hell that nobody would come in and find him. He felt kind of ridiculous. This was more Addison's kind of thing; he had never been in one of these places before except to follow her in there and hassle her for sex. But he didn't want to talk to anyone and he didn't want anyone to talk to him. He was having a bad day. And, yeah, he wasn't dying; he had Meredith; and it should all be great. But Derek-fucking-Shepherd, as usual, had ownership of the high horse and managed to make him feel guilty and worthless every time he saw him, which seemed to be about fifty fucking times a day.

The door of the supply closet opened a crack and he heard Callie saying something about hygiene and anti-bacterial soap.

"Go away Torres," he growled and she put her head around the door.

"Oh," she turned briefly back to whoever she was talking to. "I missed something. They keep attending surgeons in here as well!" She smirked at him and he gave her a snarky look in return. Focusing her attention outside again for a second, she said, "Just give me a minute, would you? I'll catch up with you at the nurses' station."

She came in and shut the door behind her and sat down on the floor with her back up against the shelving.

"Imagine meeting you here!" she said. "I haven't seen you in days." She smiled and twitched an eyebrow at him.

"Did you want something?" Mark asked. "Because otherwise, could you please fuck off and leave me alone?"

Her eyes widened. "Bad day?" she asked.

"How did you guess?"

"Me too," she said. "Bad day, bad job and a husband who prefers his weird and judgy friends over me. So what you got?"

"Derek," Mark mumbled.

Callie chuckled. "Yeah, well, I imagine he's pissed that you stole his woman _again_."

Mark looked at her, momentarily annoyed, but then smiled. "She's worth it," he said, the thought of Meredith briefly taking precedence over Derek.

"Told you she had a thing for you," Callie said smugly.

'Yeah, you did," he said. "And, thank you. I mean that."

"Took you both long enough, though."

"Well, that probably wasn't helped by you telling her I was fucking Addison," he said. "And, by the way, stop being a bitch to my girlfriend, or you and I won't be friends any more."

Callie laughed. "The arthroplasty, you mean?"

He nodded.

She shrugged. "I was . . ._ cranky_ about George hanging out with Stevens and the future Mrs. Sloan all the time. And, she has no talent for ortho—"

"Because any normal person does?" He smirked at her.

"Oh, it must be _so_ nice to get your own back for all the plastic surgery jokes," she snarked. "Anyway . . . she was pissing me off and Addison was here, looking all hot and well, you know—_Addison_, and I thought I'd help her out a little. And all I said was that Addison had gone to look at a house with you. And, by the way, congratulations on getting out of the hotel! I'll have to work on that one." She shrugged. "You should be happy. She would never even have visited you in oncology if it wasn't for me. She was being all tortured and devastated and . . . vague, like always, and—"

"Okay, you've made your point," he interrupted her. "Didn't I just ask you _not_ to be a bitch?" He gave her a smile that he intended to be placating and just a little what he thought they meant by 'McSteamy' and she rolled her eyes. "And I _am_ happy. I probably wouldn't even have understood what I felt if it hadn't been for you." This sounded kind of pathetic when he said it out loud and he felt the need to justify it. "Derek . . . after Addison . . . I couldn't be that guy, Cal . . . but now . . . ." He sighed.

He looked absolutely lost and Callie felt the need to comfort him somehow.

"You know," she said. "Today really is a shitty day for me and I could use a hug right about now."

Mark stared at her blankly. "Don't let me stand in your way," he said.

She laughed and stared back exaggeratedly. "I _mean_—dumb-ass!—that I want _you_ to hug me."

"You do?" He scrutinized her suspiciously. "Because I find it . . . I don't know . . . strange, shall we say?" He was making fun of her. "That, when I wanted to fuck you, you wouldn't let me within 10 feet of you. And when I don't and c—" He wasn't about to tell her that! "When I don't, first you come to my hotel room and flirt and now you can't wait to rub your body all over me." He smirked evilly. "Was I wrong when I called you a cock-tease?"

He couldn't admit that he wanted her to hug him, but he thought it might make him feel better. 

"Are you done?"

"I guess," he replied, still smirking a little.

"Then get over here and help me up!"

Standing, with a sigh, he held out his hand and she took it and pulled herself up. She smiled thoughtfully.

"So what are we waiting for?" he asked. "Can we get the sisterly bonding ritual over with?"

"I like being friends with you, Mark," she said softly. "It makes life better."

"C'mere, Torres." Her sudden seriousness made him feel out of his depth, and he pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms around her.

He wished that he didn't know anything about O'Malley and Stevens. He was pretty sure that their affair, or whatever the hell it was, was going to come out and he wished there was something he could do to save Callie the inevitable pain.

"You know, Cal," he growled in her ear. "You're way too good for O'Malley. You want me to beat the shit out of him for you?"

"It's a tempting offer," she said into his chest, and cuddled closer to him, enjoying his strength and warmth. "Not today though, huh?"

She pulled out of his arms and smiled at him. "Meredith's a lucky woman," she said.

"No," he said. "It's me who's—" His pager went off, stridently breaking the confidential mood. "Who the hell is that?" he said irritably, pulling out the pager and squinting at it. He laughed wryly. "Oh, that's just great! The guy can't fucking talk to me but now he wants a goddamn consult." He shook his head in disbelief.

"Derek?" Callie asked.

"Uh-huh."

"You want me to beat the shit out him for you?"

Mark sighed and laughed slightly. "Any fucking time, Torres," he said. "But only if I get to watch." 

* * *

"What?" Mark snapped as he entered the attendings' lounge, where Derek had paged him. If he was honest, the location and the lack of any obvious patient caused a brief surge of optimism, because it seemed like Derek might have used the request as some kind of an excuse to see him. But, it wasn't an optimism that he had any use for. What was the point of getting his hopes up just so that Derek could break his balls one more time?

Derek looked up from the file he was reading and smiled distantly, as though to a colleague he hardly knew.

"Well?" Mark said irritably. "You paged me. Was there a reason?"

Derek sighed. "Obviously," he said. "Sit down."

Mark glared at him but sat down anyway, as far away from him as possible on the other side of the small room.

Derek gave a slight, smug, and very fucking irritating laugh at this.

"Can we get this over with?" Mark asked. "Some of us have work to do." He actually didn't. His decorator had an appointment with him later that day to discuss a cosmetic rhinoplasty. Other than this uninspiring prospect, he had nothing do other than go over recovering patients' charts, torture interns and residents, and sit in supply closets feeling like shit. Saying he was busy sounded better, though, and made him feel protected against Derek's obvious indifference towards him.

Derek cleared his throat. "I have a procedure coming up that I need your help with," he said.

Mark inhaled. "You need _my_ help?" he asked dryly and Derek nodded. "Because, last I heard I'm a 'surgical beautician' who screws up people's lives. Are you sure it's me you want?" 

Derek gave an impatient sigh. "I need a plastic surgeon. I need a good plastic surgeon. And, though I take absolutely no pleasure in saying this, you're the best there is."

Mark was surprised and pleased by the unexpected praise.

"The best there is available in Seattle, that is."

"Prick!" Mark thought, annoyed, as much as anything, at his own gullibility—this kind of backhanded compliment had always been Derek's MO, even when they were friends. He sighed wearily. "What's the procedure?"

"Mercy West have referred a complicated meningioma to me—"

"And?" Mark sniped at him. "That's neurosurgery. Why the hell do you need me?"

Derek smiled at him, archly patient and long-suffering, as though dealing with a difficult child. "If you'll shut up for a minute, I'll tell you," he said.

Mark sighed again, heavily and Derek raised an eyebrow. "Can I continue?" he asked, and Mark grunted in response.

"It's a huge tumor. The angiogram showed a sunburst appearance. It's benign, but its size and structure mean that it's encroaching on the occipital horn of the left lateral ventricle. The patient's currently undergoing radiation at Mercy West to slow the tumor's growth, but—"

"Do you have any recollection of the last couple of times we saw each other?" Mark interrupted him again.

After a long pause, Derek acknowledged that he did with an even "Yes."

"And yet, you're talking about meningiomas. No, 'sorry I shot you down in fucking flames, Mark' or, if I remember our previous conversation correctly, 'sorry I called you a fucked-up loser.' Nothing like that going through your mind right now?"

After another, longer pause, Derek said deliberately, "If I said that, I would be lying. I'm not sorry. I'm not talking about our former—our_ so-called_—friendship. I'm talking about my responsibilities as a surgeon. The chances of my helping this patient will be vastly improved if I can work with you. And, if you'll just let me tell you what I have in mind, you'll find that it's groundbreaking surgery. You could probably write up your part of it and get published. That ought to be something that would appeal to you."

"Right, so we're back to me being a—"

"Just shut up and listen," Derek snapped and, when Mark didn't interrupt again, continued. "It's been proved with tumors of this size that the conventional methods of calvarial reconstruction are often vulnerable to damaging—"

"Infections," Mark supplied. "Then you do a scalp expansion and fix it."

"Exactly," said Derek, warming to his subject. "But what if you do it up front; immediately after the tumor's removed; or even start the expansion during the tumor removal?"

Mark thought about it and was, grudgingly, impressed. "You know, that's not a bad idea," he said. "And, you're right – it could be very publishable."

Derek laughed wryly. "Yeah, I thought you'd like that part. So—are you in?"

"When's it scheduled for?" Mark asked. 

"It seems as though the radiation's been fairly successful in keeping the growth in check. I want to run some more labs and make a thorough game plan for the procedure, but I was thinking some time early next week. Monday or Tuesday?"

"'S fine," Mark said. Julia's cocktail of medication had been pretty effective at controlling the worst of his symptoms. And because of this, he slept better and was less exhausted. He was fairly confident that he would be fine to do the procedure. "We done here?" he asked, standing up.

"I think so," Derek replied. "You want to take this file? I can get another copy."

Mark walked over to him and reached out his hand for the file. As he took it, he looked into Derek's eyes and saw . . . nothing, really; a cold, distant absence of feeling that stirred up again the horrible sensation of being . . . discarded.

Derek returned his gaze steadily and said, quietly implacable, "That's all."

Mark swallowed hard. "You really don't want to . . . ?" he faltered. "After what . . . fuck . . . nearly 30 years . . . you want to throw it all away? We were . . ." he wanted to say 'brothers' but couldn't bring himself to.

"We _were_," Derek nodded tersely. "We're not anymore. And I think you'll find that _you_ threw it all away. Twice." He stood up. "I'll get back to you about the surgery when I have more details, Dr Sloan," he said and left the lounge.

Mark dropped into the chair that Derek had vacated and, still holding the file, stared, without really seeing anything, in the direction he had gone. For nearly five minutes, he sat motionless, numb and unthinking. Then, his awareness returned and, with it, the memory of his conversation with Cristina Yang. For the first time he really understood what she'd meant when she'd said

"_. . . shouldn't you value something that could set you free over something that traps you?_"

He found it difficult to formulate coherent thoughts about the remnants of his and Derek's friendship. But he recognized how incredibly compromised it had become. The loss of their 'brotherhood' hurt, yet, at the same time, he felt kind of. . . liberated that he didn't have to keep on justifying himself and feeling bad. If Derek didn't want to be his friend, what the hell could he do about it? 

"God, I love you, Grey," he said softly. He got up and left the attendings' lounge and went in search of the woman who had helped to free him. What was it she'd wanted him to buy her? Oh, yeah – a double caramel latte. He wondered whether Yang had the same dubious taste in coffee as Meredith, because maybe he'd get her one too.


	27. Eight Weeks Later Tuesday Early Morning

Chapter 27, Eight Weeks Later – Tuesday Early Morning

It was 3:00 am and Mark couldn't sleep. Meredith was lying next to him, occasionally snoring, but this wasn't what was keeping him awake. He was . . . what? apprehensive? scared? shitting himself? about the procedure with Derek later that day. Not the scalp expansion; tissue expansions weren't especially challenging for a skilled plastic surgeon and he'd done them before. That wasn't the problem. The problem was the prospect of being with Derek all that time.

The previous afternoon, Derek had called him into meet the meningioma patient. Mark had never given any thought to what she might be like and she had surprised him. She wasn't exactly hot; but she was arrestingly fit and self-contained. She was a professional marathon runner. She was twenty-five. Her head was shaved—for the radiation, he guessed, as her hair had grown a little and it would have to be done again for the procedure—and her deep blue, confident eyes had stood out because of this. And, more or less as soon as he'd seen her, he'd known she was in pain.

"_Melanie," Derek gave her the 'I have it all under control' smile he used with patients. "This is Dr. Sloan, your plastic surgeon. He's going to be making sure you look good again after your procedure."_

_Mark willed himself not to be provoked by Derek and ignored him. "Hey," he said, smiling cockily at her. Well, this was his bedside manner as much as the neuro-god impression was Derek's. "What Dr. Shepherd means is that I'll be using an advanced reconstructive technique . . ." (He heard Derek snort very quietly.) " . . . to let the surgical trauma to your skull heal more effectively. It's called tissue expansion. It's exactly how it sounds: I insert a silicone balloon expander" she raised her eyebrows at this and he smiled reassuringly "under the skin near the trauma site—that is, where you've been butchered by Dr. Shepherd." He winked at her and she smiled and twitched an eyebrow, before looking briefly over at Derek, who smiled back at her, not quite able to disguise his disgruntlement. "And that gets filled with salt water, and refilled over time, and causes your own skin to stretch and grow. Simple, elegant, very little chance of infection."_

_"I thought it would be the best way to minimize the infections we discussed that can sometimes derail these procedures post-operatively," Derek added._

_"Because Dr. Shepherd thinks of everything," Mark replied, smiling at the patient, but hoping Derek got the intended sarcasm._

_She smiled back at him. She had an indefinable quality that made him sort of like her. "So . . . I'm a little afraid of being unconscious around a plastic surgeon," she bantered. "I can trust you not to make any little 'improvements' while I'm out, right?"_

_"You don't need any work done," he said. Something about her eyes distracted him, but he could talk complimentary shit on autopilot. "You look great as you are."_

_"Melanie's a marathon runner," Derek said for no apparent reason and smiled indulgently at her._

_"Wow!" Mark said. "The gait disturbance and sudden onset drowsiness must be a bitch in that line of work."_

_"Dr. Sloan. . . ." Derek warned, but she laughed. Mark had known she would; he could read her. But, there was still something strained about her; something that didn't seem right and he studied her, trying to work out what it was._

_"What?" she asked, challenging his scrutiny._

_It was just a hunch but it seemed to him as though she was in more pain than she was letting on. "You don't have to be in pain, you know," he said gently. "You can ask Dr. Shepherd to have your meds upped or changed."_

_"I'm fine," she said. "I feel fine." She was still friendly, but something had changed; a subtle wall had been raised._

_"I'm serious—" Mark began, but Derek intervened._

_"We'll see you tomorrow, Melanie," he said, casting a questioning glance at Mark. "Your intern is . . . let me see . . ." Derek glanced at her chart, "Dr. George O'Malley. He'll be here first thing in the morning to prep you. I'm hoping to be able to get out the entire tumor." He smiled at her and then shot a glance at Mark. "Shall we?_

_Mark gave her one last look, but she no longer wanted to communicate with him. He smiled and nodded professionally and left the room with Derek._

_"What the hell was that about?" Derek asked, as soon as they were outside._

_He shrugged and looked down and shook his head. "She's in pain, Derek," he said quietly. "She just doesn't want to tell you."_

_Derek gave a short laugh. "Forgive me if I'm not convinced. I mean, sensitivity hasn't traditionally been one of your strengths," he said._

_Again, Mark ignored him and reminded himself that Derek Shepherd's assumptions didn't necessarily define reality, however much his former best friend thought they did._

_"And she's fine; Mercy West did a good job with the pain management and we have her on the same regimen. And she knows to tell a nurse or O'Malley if she has any problems. She'd tell us if—"_

_"She wouldn't," Mark interrupted. "She wants you to think she's strong. She doesn't want to look like a victim. Whatever you have her on is helping enough that she can deal with it; but she's in pain."_

_Derek narrowed his eyes. "How could you possibly know?"_

_And, at this, Mark lost it. "Oh, I don't know Derek," he snapped back. "Maybe because I've been in pain for the past three months and I can recognize it in somebody else?" He looked away and ran his hand over his face. "Sorry," he mumbled. He wasn't, but what the hell else was there to say?_

_"Are you in pain now?" Derek asked cautiously._

_"Because you care; or because you're worried I'll screw up in the OR tomorrow?"_

_"Because I . . . I'm . . . concerned about you." Derek said. "I didn't know."_

_"Yeah, you did."_

_"You're right. I did know. I didn't think, though." Derek paused and sighed and, just for a moment, something about him reminded Mark of the friend he'd lost._

_"I'm sorry for that. I should have—"_

_"I'm fine," Mark interrupted him, unable to hear any more._

_"You're 'fine?'" Derek asked. "Or you're really okay?"_

_Despite himself, Mark laughed slightly. "I'm okay. They have some good drugs up there in oncology and I have a connection," he joked. "I'm not in pain right now. And," he looked at Derek and assessed him before saying "I'm in partial remission." He risked a guarded smile and shrugged. "So that's good."_

_Derek's eyes actually softened. "That's good," he confirmed very quietly. "I'm happy for you. I mean that." They stood in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds until Derek impulsively reached out and punched him good-naturedly on the arm. Mark raised an eyebrow and Derek smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "It's good," he repeated. "Really good. I'm glad."_

_Mark swallowed and looked down briefly, before meeting Derek's eyes and growling, "Thanks." He didn't want to reveal the effect that Derek's gesture had had on him. "I should probably—" he waved his hand to imply "get going."_

_Derek nodded. "Maybe I'll have another quick word with Melanie," he said. "See if you're right. There's no need for her to be in pain._"

Derek had been so much like he used to be during the final part of that conversation. And Mark had felt accepted by him, maybe even valued. He sighed. This was too fucking hard. He'd made a decision not to care about Derek and whether or not they were friends; but now the pull of wanting the guy in his life was back. He had kind of enjoyed a week of not obsessing over Derek; now he felt hope again and didn't fucking want to because, where Derek was concerned, hope was usually only one step away from total demoralization.

Meredith stirred next to him. He loved the way she woke up; puzzled and dazed and confused by her surroundings. But she'd never once seemed confused about _him_. Whenever she opened her eyes and saw him, she seemed pleased and relieved and just completely happy that he was there. He didn't think anybody had ever looked at him quite that way before.

"Hey," she said sleepily.

"Sorry." He reached for her hand. "Did I wake you?"

"Ha!" she said. "That's a good one. Because I know that if you're awake at . . ." she glanced at the clock," . . 3:19 in the morning, there's a good chance it's because I was snoring." She grinned self-deprecatingly. "So, did _I_ wake _you_ ought to be the question."

He shook his head. "It wasn't you."

"Are you okay?" she asked, raising herself up on one elbow and looking at him with concern.

"Yeah," he reassured her softly. "I'm fine." She gave him a look; they had discussed this phrase and agreed to limit its use between them. "I'm _fine_," he said. "I mean it."

Meredith narrowed her eyes and considered her options. "Well, even if you are fine," she said . . . well, purred, "Would you like me to make you feel even better? I mean, I'll never get back to sleep now. We'll have to find something to do to while away the hours before we get up."

She climbed on top of him and kissed his chest and then slid down his body, licking and biting him softly as she disappeared under the comforter.

"Meredith—"

"Ssshh," came from under the fluffy fabric and he felt her lips brush softly against him.

God, she beguiled him. She kept insisting on _non-sex_ sex, even though he was still frustratingly insecure, and it was always, somehow, great. The simplest thing, everything, just the touch of her skin against his, was incredible. She had this way of—

"Oooh," she said and briefly popped her head up from under the comforter and gave him a horny grin that he couldn't help returning as he felt himself harden. She stuck out her tongue and licked her lips. Fuck, she was cute.

"Meredith." he said again. "You can't—"

"I most certainly _can_," she interrupted. "In fact, I've been told I'm quite talented!"

He sighed, because what her hands were doing wasn't making it very easy for him to talk . . . or move . . . or think. "Just . . . stop for a minute," he said and reached into the drawer of the nightstand. He pulled out a condom and handed it to her.

She took it and read the wrapper. "Strawberry flavor," she said matter-of-factly and tore it open. "I'm sure Mark flavor is nicer," she smirked.

"Yeah, well, you don't know where I've been," he said. "Hell, _I_ don't know where I've been." Her eyes peered widely out at him. "What?" he asked. "Did I _say_ I was a romantic?"

"I tend to forget about your dirty past . . . recent past," she teased him. Her tone became loving and she . . . warmed him . . . when she said, "I sort of think of you as mine."

"I _am_ yours," he said gently and stroked her hair. Then he smirked. "So, you going to do anything about it, or just make promises you can't keep?"

"Well, let's see . . ." She unfurled the condom and eased it over him. As she did so, she gave a little exploratory taste and grimaced playfully. "It still tastes like rubber," she said, "strawberry or not. And I'm _still_ sure you taste nicer. It's really a shame you're such a slut." She grinned, wanting to make sure he knew she was joking and how much she loved him. "Because—"

She was interrupted by the shrill tone of his pager coming from the nightstand.

"Who am I?" he groaned. "A fucking resident?" The page and his frustration had an immediate physical effect and he groaned again. He picked up the pager and Meredith tactfully removed the condom. "Sorry," he mumbled. "It's not like I'm exactly overburdened with boners right now."

"You _should_ be sorry," she said teasingly. "Because I give great blow jobs!"

"I don't doubt you do," he muttered, his attention half on the pager. "Hopefully—" he stopped abruptly. "Derek's patient coded," he said quietly and swallowed. "How the hell did that happen?"

"The meningioma? Alex was pretty psyched about the tissue expansion."

Mark nodded distractedly. "I should probably go in." He was uncertain why but, for some reason he didn't fully comprehend, he wanted to. "You want to come with me? I'd like it if you came with me." He was also uncertain why he wanted this. The whole thing had disturbed him more than he could understand.

"Sure," she said, getting up and throwing away the condom in the trashcan. "Just give me a minute and I'll be right with you." She went into the bathroom and turned on the faucet.

As he pulled on his clothes, Mark thought about how much he loved her. Everything felt right about them, their relationship, their friendship, sex. He felt – and he recognized the sentimentality of this but for some reason he didn't mind – he felt like he was home."

"Mer," he called out to her.

"Mmhm," she said, emerging from the bathroom pulling a sweater over her head.

"I could get tested," he said. "I _should_ get tested."

"Tested for what?" she asked, searching around the room for her boots.

"STDs," he said. "Then we could . . . we wouldn't have to . . . fruit flavors could be confined to ice-cream." He smirked – but sort of hopefully because he wanted her approval. He'd never offered to do this for anyone before—not even Addison, which was a little off, now that he thought about it— and it felt like a declaration of . . . _something_ . . . something good.

"You _could_," she said dryly. "You _should_, even." She retrieved the boots and sat down on the bed to put them on. "I already _did_. When I was waiting around for you to make up your mind about me."

"So . . . you," he looked down at the floor. "You're . . . you want to stay with me?" he said, raising his head to gauge her reaction only when he'd reached the last word.

Meredith patted the bed. "Come here," she said. He went and sat next to her and she put her arms around his neck.

"I want to stay with you," she said softly and pulled him into a kiss. When they parted, his hand gently brushing the side of her face, she added, "Anyway – everyone knows my specialty is sleeping with inappropriate men. It seems to me that I'm sleeping with about the _most_ inappropriate man I could find. And I don't think I'm going to find a better one."

"You don't, huh?"

She shook her head.

"Me either," he said. "Slutty intern, that is."

She narrowed her eyes. "Did you happen to want that blow job?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah . . ." he smiled at her.

"Then be nice," she said. "I'm not a slutty intern; I'm a slutty resident and I'll thank you to remember that!"

- - - - -

Derek closed the door of the darkened on-call room, leaned back against it and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut against the weariness that was threatening to overtake him.

"Damn," he said, beating his head once, lightly, against the door. "Damn you! You and Addison . . . and Meredith."

Further inside the room, he heard someone clear his throat and shuffle on the narrow bed, and he turned on the light, unaware before this moment that he hadn't been alone.

"Dude." Alex Karev blinked in the harsh overhead light and shifted himself into a sitting position on the top bunk.

Derek inhaled and stared irritably at the younger man. "Dr. Karev," he muttered. "You seem to have the power of omnipresence these days." It seemed as though Karev was habitually present during his most vulnerable and angry moments recently and he resented him for it. He supposed that this was, in all fairness, unreasonable, but that was how he felt. He was entitled to _some_ goddamn feelings, wasn't he?

Alex gave him a look that emanated bored, pissed-off derision and snorted. "It's hardly my fault if you feel the need to talk to yourself," he said. "Anyway, _you_ woke _me_ up."

Derek wanted to say something about being one of the world's foremost neurosurgeons and Karev being merely a second year resident, but it was past 2:30 in the morning and he was tired and he had the meningioma surgery coming up. He didn't think he had the energy to take on Karev, who seemed to be more or less impervious to all forms of seniority, with the possible exception of Bailey.

"I need to sleep," he said, sitting down on the bottom bunk and resting his head in his hands. "I have a surgery and I haven't slept in 20 hours. I need to sleep"

Alex lay down. "Good," he grunted. "You want to turn the light off then?"

Derek sighed, stood up again, turned off the light, and then made his way back to the bed. He stretched out and tried to get comfortable. He was pretty used to these beds—and wouldn't Addison just love to hear him admit that!—but even so, they weren't the most comfortable place to spend the night. He fidgeted around trying to find a decent position and then thumped the meager pillow hard.

Alex sighed.

"You're in on my surgery later today?" Derek asked him. He wasn't going to get to sleep just yet, and, clearly, Karev was still awake, even if grudgingly.

"I'm on Sloan's service," he said curtly. "The scalp expansion. Isn't that part of the surgery technically _his_?"

"Well, it's principally a neurosurgery. The point is to take out the. . . ." Derek trailed off. He had lost interest in his own defensiveness and curiosity had the upper hand.

"You like working with Mark?" he asked.

"He's okay."

"I thought you disliked him," Derek said, the darkness and exhaustion making him more talkative than he might otherwise have been. "In fact, I rather thought the feeling was mutual."

Alex sighed again. "I told you before. Whatever bitch fight you and Sloan have going on has nothing to do with me."

Derek ignored the rudeness. He had to acknowledge that from the outside his . . . interaction with Mark must look like some kind of soap opera. Well, his whole life must look that way, really. And he was the one insisting on conversation, not Karev.

"He's changed, though." Alex's voice broke into his introspection. "Since the cancer. He's different. Less of an ass." He coughed awkwardly. "That must be . . . it must be hard, don't you think? He's the only person I know who isn't just a patient who's had cancer. You have to give him some credit for how he deals with it. I mean, one time, he was puking in the rest room and then, like, two minutes later he's talking to me about a rhytidectomy—"

"Ah, yes, the plastic surgeon's attempt to make a face lift sound like an important procedure," Derek interrupted snarkily.

Alex let the remark go, but said quietly, "You know, he said a while back that he's not so into doing cosmetic procedures anymore." He had no idea why he was getting into this. He didn't want to get involved. It was none of his fucking business. But, if Sloan was an ass, Shepherd seriously had to be a worse one. The way he'd acted at Joe's that time was messed up. And Sloan was more or less his boss now, and he kind of liked the guy. And he made Meredith happy, which was definitely cool. And although Alex hadn't yet been on the receiving end of this change of heart, last week he'd brought Meredith—and Yang, for fuck's sake!—a caramel latte! "That stuff bores him."

"Well, I guess he's made enough money out of it, and it's gotten him laid enough times that he can afford to be bored," Derek said and was immediately ashamed of saying something so acerbically idiotic.

"Dude," Alex said sharply. "We all know he slept with your wife. Deal with it! Move on! I mean, _he_ has." He became suddenly quiet.

"You mean," Derek asked, choosing to overlook the full implications of this tactlessness in the interests of enjoying a come-back, "since _you_ slept with my wife?"

For a moment, there was silence and then both men laughed. "We should try to get some sleep," Derek said and rolled over onto his side.

The problem wasn't really Addison anymore. Anyway, he had more or less promised her that he would at least try to be friends with Mark again. And, although promises apparently meant very little to all the most important people in his life, he took them—even implied, half-hearted ones—seriously. The problem was Meredith.

He sighed. She had been right, though. They had become dull and lifeless. He'd known this himself. He'd even sat in oncology complaining to Mark about it, damn it. Probably right about when they were . . . falling in love. He could hardly bring himself to think about this and felt a surge of anger.

He didn't want to care about Mark. He'd acted against his better judgment; he'd acted compassionately; and he'd gotten screwed over again.

Unfortunately, though, now he could see himself through Karev's eyes. He could see how unpleasant he'd been outside the OR that time. He could see perfectly well what he'd done at Joe's—he'd done it intentionally; he'd wanted to hurt Mark and he'd succeeded. At the time, it had felt . . . good. Honestly, he wondered what he'd become, and he wanted to blame Mark for that as well. He'd tried to do the right thing, and he'd been reduced to this resentful, malicious, cold-hearted ass. A fucking surgeon—who spent half his time dealing with neurological tumors for god's sake—who couldn't even appreciate that his . . . his . . . that Mark had been experiencing severe pain without having it pointed out to him.

"I don't want to feel this way about you," he thought. "You were my _brother_. You still _are_, goddamnit." He pressed his eyes shut, sensing unwanted moisture. "Fuck you! You fuck up my whole life. Every goddamn thing about it. You . . . you betray me over and over again. But, Addison was right. I _do_ miss you." He banged his head against the pillow. "At least you're not dying," he thought angrily. "Because that would be. . ." he wanted a sarcastic word but all that came to mind was "devastating" and he didn't want to use that and so substituted "typical, wouldn't it? To fuck up my life and then leave me to grieve about you for the rest of it."

He lay still, trying not to think about anything and willing sleep to invade his mind and relieve him of the need to feel.

He had almost succeeded, when his pager went off—closely followed by Alex's, who groaned and yawned—and he jolted abruptly back into consciousness. It was a Code Blue. Melanie. He struggled off the bed and rushed out into the hallway, Karev right behind him.

When they reached her room, O'Malley and Nurse Tyler and some junior nurse he couldn't recognize were standing over her, and O'Malley still held the crash paddles uselessly in his hands. "Time of death 3:34," he said limply, casting a nervous glance at Derek and then Alex. "I'm . . . I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd," he said. "She was fine one minute and then she . . . she just crashed. We did everything. . ."

Derek rubbed his hands over his face. "O'Malley. Contact her family. Get permission for an autopsy and then try to arrange one as soon as possible." He turned to Alex. "Page Dr. Sloan and let him know, would you?" He sighed. "I guess there's no reason for him to come in this morning now." But for some reason he hoped like hell that Mark would show up. He didn't think it was very likely. Mark seemed to have taken his dismissive behavior in the attendings' lounge last week to heart—which had been his intention at the time, but was now just another source of ambivalent regret. But he hoped that their short exchange the previous day might have changed something between them because, right now, he just wanted to see his friend.


	28. Eight Weeks Later Tuesday Morning Part 1

A/N: thanks to my beta, DeniseSB, who really is brilliant.

* * *

Chapter 28, Eight Weeks Later – Tuesday Morning, Part 1

After spending close to an hour looking for Derek all over the fucking hospital, Mark bought some coffee and retreated to his nearly never used office. The small, windowless, almost insulting office that Richard Webber insisted was all that was available for the Head of Plastics—although it wasn't lost on him that Derek's was bigger and nicer. He lowered himself with a groan into the supposedly 'ergonomic' swivel chair, that he never seemed to be able to adjust quite right, and, on the rare occasions he sat in it for more than 10 minutes, always managed to make his back ache—and that was _before _he became a decrepit mess.

The sensible thing to do would have been to page Derek. It was just that dealing with him right now made him feel stupidly awkward and reticent. On the drive over, he'd realized that he'd come in because he thought Derek might somehow find his presence . . . useful or something. But, now that he was here, he was scared. And this pissed him off, because Mark Sloan was not accustomed to being _scared_; at least he hadn't been or hadn't acknowledged that he had been, until the cancer had brought to the surface a bunch of previously well-hidden emotions. He was scared that his spontaneous gesture that had seemed like such a great idea at 3:30 this morning was only going to result in his ego being dented and his friendliness trashed.

And added to this, he was beginning to feel bad again. He hadn't gotten enough sleep, he had a headache and his stomach felt kind of crappy. Not exactly painful or nauseated, just crappy, but it wasn't helping. He rested his elbows on the desk and let his head drop into his arms. He had agreed with Julia that he would take the powerful meds she had prescribed only when he really needed to, and, anyway, he really didn't want to develop a dependency on painkillers. But the drugs gave him the illusion that he felt fine. And he liked that. He liked not feeling like his body was going to give up on him at any moment. He liked not being physically reminded that he had cancer. He knew all the statistics, and, seriously, duodenal cancer didn't have the greatest remission rates. He got that Julia was optimistic about his progress; and, yeah, her labs showed all the right cell counts and tumor reduction. But wouldn't you have to be insanely optimistic to think that the first phase 3 trial of a treatment was going to yield startling results with a kind of cancer it was more or less impossible to treat successfully by any other method?

"Please let this work out," he said under his breath. He felt out of his depth and without the resources to cope with the complexities of his life. Love had always either freaked him out or fucked him over, but now he was happy with Meredith, and he couldn't even express the good intentions he had towards her because he was scared—yeah, right . . . again!— that they were all going to come to shit. The last thing in the world that he wanted was to hurt her or leave her, but he might not have any choice about that. He wished he hadn't come in; that he'd stayed back in the hotel room and spent all day in bed with Meredith and gotten a goddamn blow job, even with a fucking condom, when he'd had the chance. Sex had always helped him not to think; sex with Meredith had to be even better for that, didn't it?

There was a knock on his door.

"What?" he said, without raising his head, more weary than irritated, and the door opened.

"Hey, Mark." When he looked up, Derek stood in the doorway. "Can I come in?"

"Where the hell have you been?"

Derek was confused. "Did we have some kind of appointment? I take it you know the patient's dead?" He winced inwardly at the tone of his own voice. He wanted to be friendly; he wanted to reveal to Mark what he'd realized in the on-call room and just tell him that he . . . that he was relieved to see him. But his feelings got in the way and he couldn't get past them

"I've been with the pathologist," he continued. "I wanted to get an autopsy done as quickly as possible. And then I went up on the roof for a while. I needed some air and some peace and some space to think." Surprised that he had communicated openly with Mark for a few sentences, his defenses kicked in again and he added, dismissively, "There was no need for you to come in. I'm handling everything."

Mark sighed, partly with frustration at himself. Was it honestly worth trying to be friends with someone who constantly made you jump through hoops that half the time you couldn't even see? But the sad, pathetic answer—and right about now he seriously hated himself for this—was "yes."

"I just thought you might like . . . I met her and she was kind of my patient and . . ." The hell with this. This stupid, passive-aggressive ambivalence was killing him. "Fuck you, Derek! I'm done with this. I thought you might want to see me. I thought you might like some support. But, as you point out, you're 'handling everything' and you don't want anything from me." He paused and leaned back in his chair and scuffed his foot against the leg of the desk a few times. "Can I ask you a favor, though? Can you just choose? Be my friend or don't. Forgive me or don't. This one-man good cop, bad cop routine, where one minute I'm a total shit and the next you're all concerned and friendly, messes with my head. And, I get that you don't care but, unlike you, I'm not really handling everything right now and you just make it all worse."

Derek swallowed. "I do care," he said quietly.

"Well, you certainly have a unique way of showing it," Mark muttered.

"No," Derek said, "I _do_ care. I recognized that last night. . . this morning . . . " he had lost track of time "whenever. I'm happy that you're here. I wanted to see you. Why else do you think I'm here in your office?"

Derek's words had a physical effect on Mark. Something like immense relief combined with the weight of unexpressed and inexpressible remorse. He fought like hell not to expose this and finally managed to reply, although shakily "You mean this broom closet masquerading as an office?"

Conscious that Mark needed time, Derek looked around. "I suppose it is a little . . . compact," he said.

Mark snorted. "You could say that. If there are three people in here, two of them have to do the Italian Banker."

"The Italian who?" Derek asked, baffled.

"The Italian Banker," Mark repeated—pointlessly, as it turned out, because Derek still didn't understand.

Mark smirked. "Seriously, Derek, the Italian—"

"I know what you said. You're just not making any sense."

"Where the guy's on his back and the woman—"

"Oh, _sex_!" Derek said, finally getting it. "In that case, I can buy that the 'Italian Banker's' been done in this office, but I can't buy that restricted space was the reason." He laughed slightly.

"You may be right. On both counts." Mark let out a deep sigh, grateful that he'd been able, at least for now, to control his emotions and even more grateful that Derek was . . . just talking to him normally, like they were friends. He'd pretty much expected never to experience that again.

Feeling more comfortable, Derek took a seat on the other side of the desk and indicated Mark's Styrofoam coffee cup. "May I?" he asked and when Mark nodded, picked it up and drank the cold dregs of coffee. He absorbed the fact that he was sitting here with Mark and it was fine. It was _good_. And he had a sudden impulse to acknowledge that he'd behaved inexcusably towards his best friend when he'd left him alone at what was probably the most difficult and painful time in his life.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly and deliberately, as he put the cup back down on the desk.

"You're sorry?" Mark was a little incredulous. Derek wasn't generally very big on apologies and, anyway, he sort of expected he would be the one who would have to apologize. And, even though part of him was pissed at this idea, part of him thought that he _should_.

Derek sighed. His impulse to express his guilt had lost its momentum almost as soon as it had emerged. He wanted to apologize, but he still wasn't quite ready. So he covered for himself.

"That we lost the patient," he said. "Do you think . . . do you think whatever you sensed about her yesterday—?"

"Fuck, no," Mark interrupted him. "I just thought she was in pain from the tumor. I didn't think any further than that."

"There were no clinical indications; nothing." Derek shrugged. He felt as though he'd miscalculated somehow, missed something. He'd been so certain he could help her, return her to normal, and she'd just died. "It's . . . it seems unfair, somehow. She was so . . . vibrant. And I could have helped her. I could have removed the tumor."

"Yeah, well, life's a bitch and then you die."

Derek raised an eyebrow and smiled wryly. "That's _very_ insightful, Dr Sloan," he said. "Very comforting. Perhaps you should see the family for me when they arrive?"

Mark shrugged. "It's true," he said. "Well . . . not necessarily the bitch part, not all the time anyway . . . " because his life had definitely gotten better recently "but the dying part's sort of inevitable, isn't it?"

Derek stared fixedly at the wall in front of him and then swallowed. This time he was determined to get out what he wanted . . . what he needed to say. "I'm happy that it's not . . . inevitable . . . just yet . . . for you." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "And I'm sorry that I . . . that I said those things and that I left you to deal with the cancer on your own."

"Yeah," Mark didn't know quite what to say and resorted to humor. "I _was_ a little worried there for a while about the healthcare proxy and what kind of decision you might—"

"You didn't cancel that?" Derek interrupted, half joking, but surprised and not a little pleased that Mark still trusted him.

"I thought about it. After that little discussion in the attendings' lounge, I was done with you.

Derek raised an eyebrow in response. "_You_ were done with _me_?"

"Well, yeah," Mark said, shrugging. "But . . . you know me better than anyone else does and, anyway, I couldn't be fucked dealing with the lawyers again." He grinned.

Derek nodded distractedly. His attention had wandered back to his own thoughts. "I loved Meredith," he said. "I loved Addison. And you . . . you were my best friend, and I didn't—"

"I'm sorry," Mark said softly. They had never talked about any of this with any honesty. He sighed deeply. "If it makes any difference, I don't think Addison ever really loved me. Not the way I loved her, anyway. I was just . . . there." This still hurt to admit, but being with Meredith had relegated the feeling to a memory more than a constant wound. "I shouldn't have . . . it just . . . and then it got out of hand, and my feelings . . ." What could he say? That he had wanted Derek's amazing wife to love him and that had driven every other feeling he'd ever had out of his heart and mind? Because that was the truth. Derek always used to accuse him of "thinking with his dick." Love was so unfamiliar to him and so surprising . . . and unexpectedly awesome, that reason and loyalty and friendship just faded into the background when there was a prospect of it with someone he could love in return.

"I was an ass with Addison," he finally said. "I was an ass _to_ her, as well, if that makes you feel any better. I screwed it all up. I was . . . chasing something and . . . I forgot."

Derek nodded again.

"And . . . Meredith," Mark could see Derek stiffen a little at this, but continued anyway, because he needed to. "I love her, man. I'm sorry. I tried not to. I tried not to be—"

"That guy?" Derek supplied, remembering his conversation with Addison.

"Yeah," Mark agreed. "I didn't hit on her. I didn't know she'd break up with you. We were sort of friends and I didn't even get what was happening at first. And they gave me drugs and she . . . I didn't know she felt that way about me and when I did. . . ."

"It's okay," Derek said quietly. Mark's floundering attempt to explain himself was making him uncomfortable on behalf of both of them.

"It is?" Mark asked, and Derek nearly laughed at his expression of tentative, surprised hopefulness.

"Well, no. Not yet. But I guess it will be." Derek gave a restrained smile. "I . . . I miss you. Meredith and I were over, I guess, even though I didn't want to admit that. And I certainly didn't want to hand her over to _you_. But, I miss you." He sighed. "You were right just now. We can't keep this fight up anymore. I don't really even want to." He paused. "I liked it when we were friends again for a while. I liked being there for you. You're my family and I'm stuck with you."

After a pause, Mark said "Thank you," feeling the tension drain from his muscles.

"Uh-huh," Derek acknowledged absently, and then said, "Do you mind if I ask you something, though?"

There was a quality in his voice that slightly resurrected Mark's guardedness, but he said "Sure. Whatever."

"Why do you love Meredith?"

Mark raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it supposed to be me that's tactless?" he asked. Where the hell did the guy get off asking something like that?

"I know how it sounds," Derek said. "But . . . I just need to know. She was my girlfriend a month ago. I divorced Addison for her. I need to know that you're going to take care of her. Don't you think you owe me that?"

"If you were anybody else right now. . . " Mark thought. And, seriously, if it was anybody but Derek he would've thrown him out of his office. But it _was_ Derek. He had no boundaries and he had no respect and, still, despite the apology, and the wanting to be friends, and the 'being stuck with you because you're my family' shit, it was obvious that Derek underestimated him. But why should now be any different? Derek had always been like that. It was part of their relationship. God, he hoped that somebody out there had a friendship that was less fucked up.

"Because, what, Derek?" he said in a low voice. "I'm screwing her because she's your ex? Or until I find something better? Or maybe to feed my cravings for sex while I wait to die?"

Derek sighed. "Don't take it that way—"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Mark interrupted sarcastically. "Was I being inappropriate?"

Derek ignored him. "I just need to know that you . . . really love her." He ran his hands through his hair and looked directly at Mark. "I loved her," he said. "I loved her so much. And I don't want her to be hurt."

Mark inhaled, closed his eyes and stopped himself from saying the several angry, bitter, and, in some cases, obscene remarks that were competing for his attention. Instead, grudgingly, he answered Derek's question.

"Because she's her; because she fits me; because I feel . . . different when I'm with her." He knew what he felt. There might come a time when he could put it into words for Meredith. He certainly tried to show her; and he would continue trying for as long as it took. Anyway, he'd talked all kinds of shit to random women; the words you used didn't always correlate with what you felt.

Derek raised his eyebrows. "That's it?" he asked.

"Well, yeah." Mark felt himself flinch slightly, and now he didn't even really feel angry. Just . . . somehow wrong; not enough; and without really understanding why. It reminded him of being a child and this increased his uneasiness. "Why does _anybody_ love someone?" He shrugged helplessly. "Because they do, right?" He looked at Derek, but no confirmation was forthcoming. "If it's so fucking easy to quantify why you love someone, why don't you tell me why _you_ loved Meredith?" He assumed that this would not be possible and felt a little sense of triumph at having turned the tables on Derek.

Except that Derek got this fucking McDreamy look on his face, like he wasn't even in the small office anymore and wasn't with Mark. "I loved her fragility," he said softly. "I loved that she could be so delicate and innocent and yet so feisty and . . . " he smiled at some private recollection, "dirty at the same time. Even though I couldn't handle it in the end, even though it was too much, I loved her darkness and how it colored her light, even in her happiest moments. I loved the paradox of her; the sexiness of her; her willingness to try even though she was as scared as hell." He wrenched himself back to the present and looked intently at Mark. "But she was right. I . . . we . . . can't ever get back what we had. It faded away and I let it. But I loved her and I had plenty of reasons why." He sighed and smiled sadly and gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

Mark half-expected Derek to look smug, and wished that he did, because that would have allowed him to dismiss everything he'd just said. But he didn't. He looked . . . loving. He looked like he understood something that Mark never could or would and for one moment he felt hopelessly outclassed. It was like the interns' ridiculous nicknames for them summed them up: Derek _was_ fucking McDreamy; _he_ was only good for steamy sex. But he _loved_ Meredith. His love was as valid as Derek's, wasn't it? She was everything he wanted, everything he needed. And he was going to have to try to express himself.

"I get that you don't trust me," he began. "I get that you think I'm not capable of . . . of loving someone. I get that." Fuck, this was awkward. "This is probably going to sound inadequate . . . but, she changed me. She changed my life. She made me feel like someone who could have a life. Like someone who deserved one." He looked down and became quieter. "I know you see me as this shallow manwhore. That's fair. But, did you ever consider that most of my life that's all I thought was available for me? I mean, sure . . . I like sex. I like sex a lot; and I'm not going to deny that a part of me likes . . . even needs . . . _needed_ . . . the whole manwhore deal." He almost hated Derek for making him open up like this; except that, in a way, he was clarifying something for himself at the same time. "But, a part of me, I guess, always hoped I could have . . . something else. The one other time it seemed like I was close to that, I got crushed."

In 30 years, Derek had never heard Mark talk quite this openly and with quite this much emotion. He had assumed that Mark lived exactly the way he wanted to. He'd always made it seem that way. That he felt excluded from or unworthy of love had never entered Derek's head and he felt somehow . . . dumb and inconsiderate and . . . well, _dumb_ more or less covered it. And when he thought back on it, there had been clues—the shrink being not least of these—but he had always just accepted Mark's façade. "I never understood—" he began tentatively. But Mark, not listening, interrupted him.

"I tried not to be with Meredith," he said. "You don't need to tell me the reasons it's a bad idea because, believe me, I know them all, way better than you do, and I told her all of them. I tried to push her away. I acted like a total jerk. And she came back. She came back, and every time I drew away, she pulled me back to her. And now . . . I don't think I can live without her. I don't think that I can live without this woman who makes it okay for me to be . . . _me_. And who thinks that I can take care of her; that I make her _safe_. I never had that before and I don't want to lose it." He sighed and shrugged. "That's all I've got. Take it or leave it."

"So Meredith tamed the manwhore?" Derek asked, and tried to inject as much acceptance into this statement as he could.

"So, sue me!" Mark smiled, relieved that the conversation appeared to be over.

"We can work this out, Mark," Derek said. "I want you back in my life. I'm tired of living in a goddamn soap opera."

"And Meredith?" Mark asked.

"We can work it out," Derek repeated.

Mark assessed him. "You know what would be good right now?" he asked. "Scotch." He glanced at his watch. "But it's like 7:30 in the morning, and Joe's not open and I'm trying not to drink. You want to get some coffee?"

Derek sighed. "Coffee sounds good," he said. "Losing your patient and making up with your brother all in one morning takes it out of you, don't you find?"

"Yeah—" Mark's pager went off. He pulled it out and, when he looked at it, he froze.

"What?" asked Derek, reflexively getting up from his seat.

At first Mark just looked at him and then back at the pager, but then said quietly "It's my oncologist . . . Julia." He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. "That can't mean anything good."

"No . . ." Derek tried to be reassuring. "She could want any—"

Mark cut him off. "She's only done this one other time. That was to tell me . . . it was when the original treatment wasn't working. And she said a couple of weeks ago that she'd let me know immediately if anything was wrong, so . . ." He shrugged, hoping that Derek would come up with something plausible that contradicted him.

"I thought you were doing well," Derek said. "Just yesterday you told me you're in partial remission."

"She _says_ that. The labs look good even. But, without the drugs, I feel kind of shitty even on my best days. I feel shitty right now." He paused and looked into Derek's eyes. "I can't shake the feeling that I'm going to die," he almost whispered. "And I don't want to."

Derek didn't quite know what to say. His own emotions were threatening to get the better of him. He swallowed. "Mark," he said. "I never said . . . I never said how much I admire you for how you've handled this." Well, if he was honest, he'd never said it because he'd never _thought_ it until Karev had pointed it out. But it was true and it needed saying. "You're strong. You'll get through this." He paused. "If you still want me, _we'll_ get through it." He put his hand on his friend's arm and allowed it to rest there.

"Thank you," Mark said simply, and then stood up with a sigh. "I guess I should go see what she wants."


	29. Eight Weeks Later Tuesday Morning Part 2

Chapter 29, Eight Weeks Later, Tuesday Morning – Part 2

"Do you want me to go with you?" Derek had asked just before Mark had left his office.

He'd refused the offer . . . "No, man. It's okay. I'll be fine," reverting to the usual evasive bravado in an attempt to control his emotions. Now he wished he'd accepted. He knew he had to go to oncology, but he couldn't make himself, and Derek being with him would have helped.

He was procrastinating, putting off the moment when he wouldn't have to guess any more. He'd spent nearly a half hour walking around outside the hospital, trying to convince himself that the next time he reached the main entrance, he'd go back in. He thought about paging Meredith, because he would have liked her support, but he couldn't bring himself to. Earlier this morning they'd been talking about what amounted to making a commitment to one another. _Now_ what could he offer her? Holding his hand while he died a slow death?

Whatever it was Julia had paged him about, he didn't want to hear it spelled out. The metastasis has increased. The tumor's grown. You've become resistant to the therapy. It's stage 4. You're going to fucking die, painfully, before you're forty, and just when your life has finally turned into something worth having.

He briefly considered just giving up and going to the nearest liquor store, because getting wasted would be so much easier than facing this, but had the sense to reject this truly crappy idea. But he i_could/i_ maybe go to the surgical floor. Check on some patients, find out what Karev was doing. After all, he still had a job to do, even if he was going to—

Just stop! He interrupted himself. Give the fucking pessimism a rest! A lab got messed up; she wants a consult on a breast reconstruction; she's horny and she wants you to screw her! It's _nothing_. Get a grip, for God's sake! Fucking man up! Just go up there and find out what she wants. Because really, he didn't have a choice.

* * *

Meredith had spent the first part of the morning getting side-tracked by George, who wanted to talk, ramble endlessly in fact, about Mark and Derek's dead patient. She had been impatient for him to finish and when he had said, "She just _died_," helplessly, for what seemed like the hundredth time, she'd snapped at him, "You followed procedure. You _did_ everything you could. Why are you taking this so hard, anyway? You've seen patients die before, lots of times." George had looked hurt, but she didn't have the energy to care about that now.

All she wanted to know was what was going on with Mark and Derek. Mark had hardly talked during the drive in to work and she was concerned for him. She couldn't help anticipating that Derek would do something to hurt him when he was just trying to be nice, and she wanted to be able to protect him from this. She was beginning to learn how deeply he felt things, even if he hardly ever let anyone know this, and half the time didn't know it himself. And she knew only too well how remote and difficult Derek could be while at the same time making you feel that you were missing something wonderful by not having his love, or friendship, or whatever. She could still remember McDreamy—how he smiled and looked at her and how he'd made her feel once. Now she had something . . . someone she loved more; but that didn't mean she had no memories and that sometimes it didn't still hurt.

Thankfully, George's pager had gone off and he'd muttered something about 'Shepherd's autopsy report,' and gone away disconsolately, leaving Meredith relieved that she could finally go and look for Mark. But George and worry and getting up at 3:00 am had exhausted her, so she went to get coffee first.

* * *

"Meredith." She knew exactly and precisely who the gentle voice behind her belonged to. She had heard it so many times. It had, after all, at one time, less than two months ago, been the voice she most wanted to hear in the world. She turned to face him, a just purchased caramel latte in her hand, and tried to smile.

"Derek," she said, trying not to put any inflection into his name. She didn't want to seem hostile or welcoming or . . . anything; she wanted to seem neutral until she'd figured out what he wanted. She indicated the coffee cart. "You want some? I could . . . " She trailed off, conscious that their last conversation had begun at the coffee cart, and conscious that he must remember this as well.

"Why not?" he said. The friendliness was still evident in his voice. "Cappuccino. Thank you." When she hesitated, he added, smiling to show that he meant well, "It's okay. However it comes. I'm not as particular as some people."

Meredith smiled weakly at Derek's joke and took refuge in ordering his coffee. But his affability made her feel braver and, as she handed him the Styrofoam cup she asked him, "Did you . . . did you talk to Mark?"

He raised his eyebrows slightly and she remembered that this had been the beginning of yet another conversation they'd had before.

Preempting any reply he might make, she said, "I'm sorry. I treated you badly. I never meant . . . it wasn't my intention for . . . it just happened." She gave a small shrug. "I fell in love with him."

Derek acknowledged her explanation with a brief nod. "We talked," he said. "I believe we understand each other better." He sighed, absorbed briefly by his own thoughts. "It was certainly an enlightening morning." He smiled, but there was something in his expression that Meredith, who was used to reading his moods, interpreted as worry.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Not at all. I was just—"

"What is it?" she insisted. She knew something was wrong. Part of her felt inappropriate, haranguing Derek when he was being so nice and . . . well, generous. But something in his manner made her feel anxious, especially now that his eyes had taken on the look of compassion she remembered so well from when she'd been in love with _him_ rather than Mark.

"I'm sure it's nothing," he said. "It's just that, when we were talking, Mark's oncologist paged him."

"What did she want?" Meredith demanded sharply.

"Really, I'm sure it's nothing," Derek repeated, not very convincingly.

Meredith looked intently into his eyes. "What did she want?" she repeated in an intense whisper.

"I don't know, Meredith. That wasn't clear. Mark seemed to think it might be—"

"It's something bad, isn't it?"

"I don't _know_, Meredith," he said again. "Mark was worried by it, yes. But, I thought it could be . . . well, anything. I've worked with Julia Lindstrom. Her job's difficult and she can be a little unorthodox sometimes." Derek had talked himself into this point of view between Mark's office, picking up the autopsy report from O'Malley and arriving at the coffee cart. Saying it out loud was as much for his benefit as for Meredith's.

For a second, Meredith panicked, unable to deal with her emotions. But she had a choice: lose it or stall until she got a hold of herself, and she chose to stall. "Did you find out why the meningioma patient died?" she asked him in a distracted voice.

Derek glanced briefly at the file in his hand. "Yes" he said, sensitive to her need to gather her thoughts. "She had a brain hemorrhage and that caused a sudden coma. Fluid built up in her lungs and airways and that led to—"

"Heart failure," Meredith supplied.

"Yes," he nodded. "It's not common, but it's documented with meningiomas. Nobody really knows why it occurs and it usually happens too fast to intervene. It's tragic. I thought I could help her."

"It is tragic," she repeated, then swallowed and then asked in a quiet, urgent voice, "What if Mark dies? I never really thought about it. Everything was so," she glanced at him to assess his reaction; his eyes still looked caring, "complicated. I never had time to think about . . . _that_." She sighed. "And I guess I didn't want to."

"I never thought about it either," he said softly. "Not enough, anyway."

Meredith nodded. Her anxiety wasn't relieved, but she was grateful for Derek's kindness, and that he seemed to have restored his friendship with Mark. _This_ was the man she had once fallen in love with. She'd hoped he was capable of acting this way, but she hadn't dared to expect it. "Thank you," she said. "For understanding. It must mean so much to Mark. It means so much to _me_. And . . . just thank you."

* * *

"Dr. Lindstom around?" Mark asked, and the oncology nurse on duty at the small nurse's station looked up and smiled. She was a pretty little brunette with nice tits that were clearly what God gave her and he'd always sort of flirted with her because, well, that's what he did. Right now, though, he was too assaulted by his own feelings to flirt and he hoped she wouldn't want to.

"Dr. Sloan!" She gushed his name in a way that implied he could fuck her right there on the counter if he wanted.

He gave her a tired smile and willed her to treat him like any other patient. "Julia Lindstrom paged me," he said.

The nurse seemed to get the message and, when she spoke next, the flirty had gone, replaced by detached kindness.

"Dr. Lindstrom has an emergency," she said gently. "Would you like to take a seat and wait for her?" She indicated the soft, leather seats in the waiting area.

Mark nodded. "Somebody circling the drain?" he asked, half sardonic and half . . . what? . . . half, more than half, scared it was going to be him next.

"She has an emergency," the nurse repeated, firmly tactful. "I'm not certain of the details. Take a seat and she'll be with you as soon as she can. I'll make sure she knows you're here."

He slumped into the pliable leather and closed his eyes. The more he tried not thinking or thinking positively, the more worst-case scenarios played themselves out in his head, until he found himself breaking out in a cold sweat.

"Mark?" He opened his eyes. It was Meredith, looking uncertain and awkward. And relief flooded him.

"Hey," he said, in a soft, low, gentle voice, and held out his hand.

She sat down next to him, close enough that their bodies just touched and took his hand. "Is it okay that I'm. . . ? Derek said . . ."

"It's okay," he said, his voice still very soft. "It's more than okay. Thank you."

"Did you find anything out? Are you all right?" she asked apprehensively.

"No and, uh, not exactly," he said and smiled. He was tempted to say 'I'm fine,' but he wasn't fine and he didn't want to hide that from her. "It's better with you here, though." He lifted her hand and kissed it tenderly. Hand kissing wasn't a customary move of his; but this wasn't a move. It was a spontaneous expression of love and trust.

"It'll be fine," she said. "I'm sure it's nothing horrible."

"Yeah, well, that's what I keep telling myself, anyway." He sighed. "You talked to Derek?"

She nodded.

"How'd that go?"

"Good," she said. "He was nice. He was—"

'McDreamy, right?" Mark said only half-snarkily and Meredith nodded again. "I knew there had to be some reason I was friends with him all those years." He almost managed a smirk. "So you think—"

Julia rushed into the waiting area. He had been about to make some lame joke about Meredith going back to Derek and was a little relieved that Julia's entrance had prevented this. A small, nagging part of him couldn't help worrying about this possibility, and the joke would probably have misfired.

Julia looked disheveled and like she'd been up all night and her long, pale blonde hair was piled up on her head and fixed there with something that Mark thought probably had more to do with office supplies than personal adornment. She was dressed in wrinkled looking pink scrubs. Not Addison-colored pink; a kind of pallid, washed-out pink, which accentuated the obvious puke and blood stains on the left hip of her scrub pants. Shit! Was that going to be him soon; spending the night puking blood on his oncologist and being described as 'an emergency' to Meredith and Derek?

"Hi!" she said breathlessly and then focused on Meredith and said "Hi!" again, in a surprised, delighted tone. She looked back at Mark. "That's _her_!" she said. "The woman who was in your room."

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Ohhh . . ." she said. "That's _her_ her; the woman you were talking about. When you told me about the woman and the house, at your IT session."

Meredith's eyes widened and Mark eyed Julia caustically.

"Are we done making tactless remarks, or is there anything else you'd like to share with us?" he asked her.

"Sorry," she said and ran a hand through her hair, dislodging some of it from its precarious binding. "I've been here all night and it's been," she inhaled "frankly crappy. But . . ." she smiled broadly at him. "It's so great that you're here!" She turned to the nurse. She seemed wired and Mark assumed she'd just lost the emergency patient or was about to. It got doctors different ways and this was one of them. "This guy . . ." she indicated Mark "is my star patient and—"

"Julia," he broke in curtly. She was beginning to piss him off. "You want to tell me why you paged me?"

"Oh, of course," she said. "Why don't we go into my office?"

"'S fine. You can do out it here."

"Wouldn't you like some privacy?" Meredith asked, concerned for him.

Julia stared at Meredith and then at Mark. "Oh, fuck!" she said and looked almost ashamed.

"Fuck?" Mark asked irritably.

"Yeah," she sort of sighed. "I screwed up. It never occurred to me. You think I paged you with bad news, don't you? I'm so sorry. I've been awake too many hours and drunk too much coffee and I have two terminal patients near—" she made herself stop her stream of talking. "But you're not one of them."

"I'm not?" he asked uncertainly.

"God, no!" she said. "You're progressing beautifully. I was just psyched when I saw your latest results and I wanted to let you know as soon as possible."

Meredith breathed out audibly and squeezed Mark's hand. He smiled absently at her, but wasn't quite able to take in what he was hearing. "You said you'd contact me immediately if something was _wrong_. Last time you paged me, it was to tell me I was . . . fucked," he said gruffly.

"I'm sorry," Julia said. "You're right. I did say that, but . . . " She couldn't keep up the contrition and her face broke into a huge grin. "Your progress is phenomenal. Your latest tests show an 83 reduction in the metastatic tumor—"

"I'm not dying?" he interrupted her.

"No," she said. "The exact opposite! And, if you'll just let me finish . . . the primary tumor has also shown some reduction and your immune system is functioning beautifully and—"

"Did you ever hear the words 'unnecessary mental anguish?'" He asked her, playing for time with sarcasm while he processed the news. It was a lawyer's phrase; it had been one of the issues in the botched rhinoplasty he'd cleaned up a couple of months ago.

Julia pulled a face. "I've already apologized for that," she said. "Anyway, why would you jump to the conclusion that you were dying? Didn't we already go over that?"

"Didn't I tell you she's a bitch?" Mark asked Meredith, staring pointedly at Julia. A part of him was pissed that Julia's thoughtlessness had put him, and Meredith and even Derek through so much shit that morning. But for the most part, he was teasing her. Her patient skills left something to be desired; but if it wasn't for her attitude and her clinical trial, he probably _would_ be the 'emergency' right now.

Julia shrugged. "Go ahead and call me a bitch!" she retorted happily. "Whatever floats your boat! But you had a very likely incurable cancer. And I put you on this protocol and now you're undergoing a startling remission. You're virtually stage 2 now. It's . . . miraculous, almost, how well this treatment works for you. You have an amazing body!"

"Oh, I already knew _that_!" Meredith couldn't resist saying. She grinned dirtily and this made Mark laugh.

"Yeah," Julia joked. "Prettiness is the something he _does_ have going for him, I guess. If not for that, who the hell would put up with him?"

"Oh, he grows on you," Meredith said, and added, softly, to Mark. "He grows on you a lot, in fact." She stroked his face, and he noticed tears in her eyes, which she tried to blink away.

"Hey," he said softly.

"Hey, yourself," she said and smiled.

Julia cleared her throat loudly. "I get that the surgeons in this hospital screw each other as a matter of routine. But do you think you could wait until you've left oncology? At least, not in the waiting area." She paused and smiled at Mark. "I guess we're done here for today," she said. "I'm glad I could give you a little good news, even if the delivery left something to be desired."

"Julia, thank you," he said. "I mean that. I—" He looked down awkwardly.

"You're welcome," she said. "You still have a way to go, of course. But . . . it's looking really good." She briefly touched his arm. "I, however, have a lot more patients, a whiny resident, and a date with a double espresso. So, if you'll excuse me . . . "

As soon as she had left, Mark said, "We have to find an exam room. I need you take some blood from me."

"Why?" Meredith was confused.

"STD tests, remember?" He grinned. "I want to celebrate not dying. I want to celebrate it a lot! Anyway you're turning me on just sitting there holding my hand, Grey. It's about time I did something about it, don't you think?" He considered. "What you said that night about people dating before they fucked . . ."

She nodded.

"Well, strictly speaking, although you've been very creative, we didn't actually fuck yet." He smiled. "So . . . you want to go on a date first? Dinner, maybe, someplace nice?"

"I'd like that," Meredith said. "I'd love to go on a date with you."

"And, once that's over with . . . then we can fuck." He winked.

Meredith slapped his arm playfully. "So the only point of going on this date is the fucking afterwards?"

"Pretty much," he teased her. "You have problem with that?"

She snuggled against him. "I have _no_ problem with that," she said in a dreamy voice. "Fucking afterwards sounds perfect."

Mark suddenly felt drained and tired as the rush of adrenaline Julia's news had caused subsided. He could talk all he wanted about fucking afterwards but, really, he still wasn't confident that he could deliver. And right now, all he wanted to do was sleep.

He inhaled. "Shall we see about these tests?" he asked her. "And then . . . you're off right? You want to go back to the hotel and get some rest with me?"

"I didn't think," she said. "You must be exhausted."

He sighed. He could lie, but they'd gotten beyond that. "I feel like a wreck," he admitted. "I'm sorry—" he started to apologize, but Meredith stopped him with a gentle kiss.

"Whatever you need," she said, "I'm here for you."

Mark tried to find words to tell her how much he loved her; how she made him feel loved and cared for in ways he'd never known before and never expected. But he had no words that were adequate. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head, hoping that his touch would convey the feelings that he was unable to express out loud.


	30. Eight Weeks Later Saturday Night Part 1

Chapter 30, Eight Weeks Later—Saturday Night, Part 1

"So dates aren't exactly my . . . forte, I guess you'd call it," Mark said and grimaced at Meredith's dogged attempts to find tequila in the frozen mango margarita that was the specialty of the 'ultra-hip, Asian fusion' restaurant he had chosen because it was expensive and hard to get into and now regretted.

"You want to get some tequila without the fruit dessert?" he asked her.

"I'm fine," she smiled at him over the huge glass. "It's nice. It's a nice drink. It's a nice place." She stuck the straw in her mouth and sucked. "I'm getting into the spirit of things," she said, twitching an eyebrow playfully. "Unlike some people." She indicated his glass of plain, single malt scotch.

"I get one drink," he said. "I'll be damned if it's going to be something disgusting and orange just to please a waiter."

"I think he's sweet . . . and hot," she teased him. "And you're being . . . grumpy . . . about your own date. It's fine."

He nodded dryly. Like he'd said, dating wasn't his forte. It made him feel awkward. It always had. He knew how to come on to women; how to pick them up in bars, or ORs, or at nurses' stations, but dating was another story. He hadn't had a lot of practice at it. Not since he was—he couldn't even remember, 15 maybe? After that . . . well, for a while it had been enough to take off his football helmet, run his hand through his sweaty hair and drawl, "Wanna fuck, baby?" Since then the lines had gotten a little more sophisticated — except that one time, back in New York, when he'd used the same move (but with a scrub cap, not a football helmet) on a visiting French expert in laser assisted liposuction. He'd figured that, since she was French, and obviously found him attractive, she might think it was cute and "_Américain_" and he'd been right, three times in the on-call room.

"Hello!" Meredith said and waved, making fun of his distractedness. "I'm right here."

"Hey," he said. She looked beautiful. She had on a simple, black dress that showed off her slim, sexy, imperfectly perfect body—imperfect perfection was a huge turn-on for a plastic surgeon. Yeah, he did great work, and he was certain his patients' lovers were very happy with the results, but there was something . . . captivating, he guessed, about a woman's body that was all her own. And she was . . . unadorned, unfussy. All she'd added was a pair of sapphire earrings that he'd bought her, on impulse, when he'd found out yesterday that his tests for a bouquet of sexually transmitted diseases were negative.

Maybe that was the problem? How could he go on a date when he'd had to get tested for STDs before he could fuck his girlfriend without worrying he might kill her? Well, if he could even fuck her, that is. Because what he hadn't told her before they came out tonight was that he didn't feel good. How could he go on a date with someone who had sat with him while he puked until his stomach was raw? Not exactly romantic, was it? Not that he'd have known romance if it bit him on the ass on a good day. Not other people's definitions of it, anyway. He knew what _his_ definition was, but that hadn't been enough for the one person he'd ever really tried it with. He just wanted to be with the woman he loved; be there for her; be wanted. The other stuff was superfluous crap. Like the requirement to wear a suit, because even though it was black and Armani and he knew he looked hot in it, it was so goddamn uncomfortable and made him feel so unlike himself. He pulled irritably at his tie and sighed.

"I think I _will_ have a shot of tequila," Meredith said, smiling wryly and got the attention of the waiter.

The earrings brought out the blue in her blue-green eyes. And her blue-green eyes smiled at him and nearly stopped his heart. He didn't tell her this because he didn't know how. But he could manage to tell her she looked beautiful.

"You're beautiful," he said, as the waiter returned with her drink.

"Well, thank you," she replied. She picked up a lime wedge, licked between the thumb and forefinger holding it and sprinkled salt on the moistened skin in preparation for doing her shot. "I'm glad you're back with us. And you're kind of beautiful yourself." She raised her shot glass to him, and then knocked back the liquor, licked off the salt and bit into the lime. "Mmmm!" she said, with a little quiver of pleasure; and Mark couldn't take his eyes off her.

What he preferred—what he'd preferred with Addison and what he'd love to do with Meredith—was getting take-out and beer (well, except that Addison had insisted on wine, preferably champagne) and just spending time alone together. If he had to have dates, that was the kind he really liked.

"You want to get out of here?" he asked her. "There's another part to this date that," he glanced down awkwardly, "that you might like more." He wanted to show her his house and, to him, this was the real date; the uninspiring dinner had just been a nod to other people's romantic conventions.

- - - - -

So now they were waiting for the valet to bring the Porsche around and Mark was nervous. Whether she liked dinner in a trumped up sushi bar was one thing; whether she liked his house was another. She'd like it, right? Addison liked it, and Addison was stupidly picky about stuff like that. He really liked his house and he wanted Meredith to like it too.

"I think I'm in love with your Porsche," Meredith said.

"It's a car," he said and shrugged, secretly pleased that she liked it. Maybe if she liked his car she'd like his house. "It works the same as any other car." If he was honest, though, he was attached to it. Not as much as he was when he'd first bought it, maybe, partly because he was conscious of the 'manwhore chick magnet' image it gave off and that he sort of wanted to dispel, especially with Meredith. But he still liked it.

"No," she shook her head cutely and smiled. "It's not just a car. It's silver and fast and shiny and it makes the other cars feel . . . ordinary." She seemed almost to wilt on the last word and her smile faded perceptibly although, when she spoke again, she tried to make out she was still bantering. "It's the Addison Forbes Montgomery of cars," she said in small voice. "I guess that makes me a VW Beetle, huh?" She tried to smile again.

"Hey, Meredith, don't do that," Mark said. He took her hand and looked into her eyes. "Don't ever say that about yourself. You're not . . . ordinary . . . why the hell would you say that? . . . you're . . . _delicate_." The word made him think briefly about Derek, who had used it in his little declaration about her; but Mark had thought it too, and before Derek said it. She _was_ delicate, but resilient at the same time—God, he loved her! "And beautiful and sexy and . . . if you had a boyfriend who hadn't flunked English twice in high school you'd know that." He sighed. "And you must know by now that I don't want Addison anymore." His voice became lower and softer as he said, "The only woman I want is you."

Meredith swallowed and looked away. He understood her reaction. It could be hard hearing that you were loved when you weren't used to it.

She raised an eyebrow and smiled. "You failed English?" she asked, deflecting her feelings. "Twice? The great Dr. Mark Sloan?"

"Well, yeah," he said. "Except I wasn't . . . then . . . 'Dr. Sloan,' that is. I played football and I liked science and math and girls. And I didn't understand the books and my book reports always sucked." He sensed himself looking at the ground and kicking at it and, for a moment, he felt like he was 17 again.

"You sound like you were cute!" she flirted.

Mark snorted. "Trust me, Mer. I wasn't. I was an ass. You'd have hated me."

"I doubt that," she said. "I liked you the first time I met you. I think that would have been the same." She considered. "Would you have liked me, though? I don't think so. You sound like such a jock. And I had pink hair and liked weird bands."

"Mer. You were female. Trust me," he said, from a confused place somewhere between flirtation and self-hatred, "as long as you wanted to fuck me and didn't want to date afterwards, I would've liked you." He rolled his eyes. "Like I said, I was an ass."

Meredith looked at him wonderingly. "You're telling me about your past," she said softly. "You've never said anything before."

"I guess I am," he shrugged. He hadn't intended to, it had just happened. As far as he was concerned, the present was a much better place to live in, especially now that he had her.

"Thank you," she said.

"Yeah?" he asked, not understanding. "Why?"

"Just thank you," she said.

"Okay," he said awkwardly. He couldn't comprehend why anyone would thank him for talking about his past, and fortunately the valet arrived with the Porsche and relieved him of the need to say anything else.

* * *

"So this is it," Mark turned on the light in the hall and shrugged. He removed his tie, discarded it on the floor and undid the top button of his shirt.

He seemed nervous to Meredith and he kept looking at her, hopefully, as if wanting her to say something—she assumed about the house.

"This is the hall," she said gently. "Halls aren't generally all that interesting or revealing. Maybe we could take a look at another room?" She smiled, thinking that she wasn't very good at this sort of thing, but apparently she was better at it than him.

"Right," he said uncertainly. "You're right. Uhm . . . come in." He walked off into the house ahead of her, turning on lights wherever he came across a switch, and she followed him into the living room.

It was awesome. It fitted him and she loved it at first sight. True, there wasn't any furniture. But it was amazing. Spacious and white and clean and yet, somehow, friendly and welcoming. Everything was lovely. From the polished wooden floors and the huge windows and the way there were different levels to the room, down to the gorgeous open fireplace that was almost big enough to sit in.

"Wow!" Meredith said, gaping up at the very high ceiling. "It's . . . it's . . . " She looked at him. He was leaning against the wall next to the door to what looked like the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest and looking about as ill-at-ease as she'd ever seen him. "Your house . . . !" she finally managed. "It's beautiful."

He grinned at her almost shyly! And he seemed to require her approval.

"You like it, then?" He shifted around awkwardly and glanced at the floor and she had to suppress an urge to laugh.

"It's beautiful," she repeated softly. "I like it. I really like it. Although," she smiled impishly and lowered her voice as though imparting confidential information, "people usually have furniture. You should think about getting some."

She had expected snark in reply, but that seemed beyond him right now. "I don't know what the woman's doing," he said, making little sense to her. "It's only furniture, right?"

"The woman?" Meredith asked, faking jealousy. "You have a _woman_?"

He laughed. "I have two. Desiree," he rolled his eyes as he said the pretentious name, "is my decorator, but she'll be gone soon. And Ramona is my housekeeper." He gave her another tentative, approval-seeking look and she briefly got an impression of what he might have looked like when he was a kid.

"They sound like porn stars," Meredith snarked. "Only you could have . . . _women_ called Desiree and Ramona."

"Well, they certainly don't look like porn stars," he said and then added, smirking and looking and sounding more like himself, "—which is kind of a shame. Especially with Ramona . . . you know, watching her dust in a thong and black patent leather thigh boots, that kind of—"

Meredith had walked over to him, her eyes sparkling partly with amusement and partly with sheer affection for him, and she smacked him lightly on the chest. "Just stop talking," she said, smiling, and before he could reply she stood on tiptoe and planted a firm kiss on his mouth. "You're a pig!" she said as she drew away.

"Like that's never been said before!" He ran a hand gently through her hair, lingering to stroke her face as he reached the end of the silky, blonde strands. "You want to look at the kitchen?" he asked her. "There's a deck through there." He'd become reticent again.

"Sure," Meredith said and followed him into the stunning, granite-countered room with its state of the art appliances. "Holy freaking Jesus!" she exclaimed. "Izzie would give lap dances at Joe's to use this kitchen!" Her face crinkled into a teasing smile. "I didn't know you cooked. Are you big on muffins? You and Izzie could bake together."

"Well, if it came with a lap dance, I guess—" Mark said, and she immediately slapped him on the arm.

"These attacks are becoming quite a habit, aren't they, Grey?" he asked, grinning as he rubbed his arm, pretending to be hurt.

"Being a pig is becoming quite a habit," she retorted playfully and he held up his hands in surrender.

"Fine! You win! And I don't cook. Except. . ." and once again he looked embarrassed.

He was so sweet, but so obviously uncomfortable, Meredith didn't know whether to enjoy him or feel bad for him.

"I can cook Eggs Benedict," he blurted out. "I got taught by . . . someone who used to work for my. . . when I was a kid. . . she was the cook," he shrugged, "you know."

"So . . . your family was rich? You had a cook?" Meredith asked. She was not altogether surprised, but this was the first time he'd mentioned anything and she was interested.

But then his mood changed. "I don't have a family," he said roughly before giving her a brief, desperate look and then letting out a groan. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have . . . just don't ask me about them, okay?"

She nodded. "Okay," she agreed. "I don't do well with families either."

"I met Dr. Grey, Senior," he said, obviously relieved to get off the subject of his own family. "Well, I held her down while the nurse shot her up with lorazepam." For the first time in a few moments, he broke into a grin. "Not exactly the regular meet the parents scenario," he said and raised an eyebrow.

"Not exactly a regular parent," Meredith replied, and raised her own eyebrow to emphasize the irony in her voice. "And you probably learned all you needed to about my mother from that encounter."

Mark gave a slight laugh. "Would you like to see the deck?" he asked her. "I asked Ramona to leave some candles out there. In the daylight, there's this great view of Lake Washington. You won't be able to see anything now, but it's still kind of nice. You can hear the water. I even have furniture out there."

Meredith studied him.

"What?" he asked, her scrutiny making him self-conscious.

His enthusiasm for his house and his insecurity about her reaction charmed her. He charmed her. That he was letting her into his life like this spoke to something in her that made her love him even more. "You're . . . you're a good person," she finally said. "You're a good person and I'm so . . . happy that I know you and that this happened for us."

"Mer." Mark opened the French doors and beckoned to her to come out onto the deck. "You have to stop saying stuff like that. At least limit the frequency. I'm used to being called . . . less flattering stuff. You're embarrassing me here."

Deliberately brushing against him as she walked out into the slightly damp, cool Seattle night, she asked, "So . . . do you feel the same way?"

"Well, yeah," he said. "You know that."

"Mmhmm," she said and gave him a gentle, teasing smile. "Just wanted to hear you say it again, though. I'm _very_ insecure. I need a _lot_ of reassurance."

He followed her outside and lit the candles, while she leaned against the handrail and peered out at the dark water.

"It's a nice lake," he said as he joined her.

She nodded. "It's a nice house," she replied and then they stood for a few minutes, in silence, looking out into the blackness of the lake and listening to the sound of it lapping against the shore, until Meredith said quietly,

"Mark?"

"Uh-huh?"

"I like this part of the date. I like this part the best. I think it might be one of the most romantic things I've ever done."

Mark put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her towards him. "Thank you," he said softly. And not wanting to disrupt the intimacy between them, she said nothing, but just snuggled closer to him and rested her head on his muscular chest. She really did feel safe right now, as though nothing could touch her. And she loved him for making her feel that way.


	31. Eight Weeks Later Saturday Night Part 2

Chapter 31, Eight Weeks Later—Saturday Night, Part 2

"So, fucking afterwards, huh?"

They were lying in bed, wound with each other in a knot of limbs and comforter. And Mark didn't want to spoil it. It was ironic. It would never have occurred to him before that sex could spoil anything. But right now, he would do anything to just stay as they were. It was too good to break into. Too intimate. Too much something that he had needed, without even really knowing it, and never quite managed to get. Not before Meredith, anyway.

If he had been himself; if his stomach hadn't been hurting most of the day; if he hadn't been so fucking tired, maybe sex would have made everything even better. He could have lost himself in her; lost himself in the sensations and touch of her body. More than that, he could have made love with her; shown her who he was; shown her the skills that a while back he'd been so nonchalantly sure of, and taken pleasure in her pleasure in him.

"Mmhm," Meredith murmured and squirmed closer against his body. "I think that was the deal." She pressed herself into his groin and wriggled seductively.

Mark laughed uneasily. "Yeah," he sighed. "It's just . . . I'm not . . . you know . . . "

Meredith turned around to face him. "It's okay," she said. "I understand." She smiled softly and caressed his face. "I want you." She shrugged playfully. "I want you inside me. And it doesn't matter how," she searched for the right word, wanting to keep it light and teasing; not do anything to make him more insecure, "_McSteamy_ you are. I understand what you're going through and, whatever happens, it's okay. But I want you. See?" She took his hand and drew it down between her thighs, guiding his fingers to show him how wet he made her just by lying next to her, skin touching skin. "That's for you," she said. "You did that." She grinned.

Mark freed his other hand from the comforter and gently grasped the back of her neck and drew her towards him. He kissed her. Tracing the contours of her mouth with his tongue, forcing his lips down hard against hers, he poured his pain and his uncertainty into passion for her. Then he pulled back. "I love you," he said, transparently honest and heartfelt. "If I could, you know I would, right? It's just—"

"Sshh," Meredith breathed. "You can. _We_ can." She rubbed herself against his hand, inhaling with pleasure at each new pressure. Then moved closer to him, lifting his hand away, making him hard with the warm friction of her body. She hooked her leg over his hip, and Mark pulled her against his stomach, and pushed into her, tenderly at first, tentatively, and then stronger, firmer, filling her, driving inside her, until her muscles tightened around him, and she breathed out, a slight catch in her throat, and gave a little, half-stifled cry and he let himself go and came inside her.

It was gentle and beautiful and like nothing Mark had ever experienced and all he could do was stare into her happy, smiling eyes and smile back. Then he kissed her again, because he had to, but this time there was no pain, no uncertainty, just love. Because in this moment, nothing else was necessary.

"We did it," Mark smirked, pulling back from her a little to gauge her reaction.

"We did," she agreed, and gave his chest a little, appreciative shove.

"Fucking afterwards . . ."

"As agreed," Meredith said, her nose wrinkling in a smile. She curled herself into him and he wrapped his arms around her and they lay like that, breathing each other in, feeling each other's warmth, until they drifted off to sleep.

* * *

When Meredith woke up, Mark was sitting up in bed, drinking coffee. She sat up lazily, pulling the comforter with her, and he handed her the cup, then nudged her, as she took a sip, and said,

"That was pretty great, huh?"

"It was," she agreed. "It was pretty great."

He winked at her. "It still works," he smirked.

Meredith laughed slightly. "I never doubted it," she said and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

'Yeah?" he asked. "You have more faith in me than I did. I thought maybe—" He broke off and closed his eyes and breathed in.

Meredith sat up straight, worried. "Are you okay?" she asked and when, at first he didn't answer her, she repeated, more urgently "Mark? Are you all right?"

He sighed, opened his eyes, and made a slightly strained attempt at a reassuring smile. "I'm sorry," he said. "My stomach's been bothering me all day. I should've said something, but I didn't want to . . . you know . . . mess up the date."

"You wouldn't have messed up anything. I don't expect you to be perfectly well," she said and stroked his arm.

He nodded slowly. "Fucking cancer, huh?" he said resignedly.

"Yes," she agreed. "Fucking cancer."

He shrugged. "In some ways, though, I guess it's not all bad. . ." he suggested, causing Meredith to raise her eyebrows at him.

"Well, yeah," Mark said, answering her unspoken question. "Because otherwise I probably wouldn't have . . . anything that I have now."

He inhaled and ran his hands through his hair, contemplating something. Not wanting to interrupt, Meredith remained silent. After a few moments, he looked directly at her and spoke again, quietly, and with intense focus, as though he were thinking through a difficult problem.

"You know what my life was like before I had cancer?" he asked her, not expecting an answer. "I was a fucking wreck. I've always been a wreck. Why do you think I ended up in a shrink's office? Then I made my best friend hate me; the woman I loved was . . ." He sighed and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, before saying, "Addison . . . how I felt . . . when she didn't love me the way I loved her. . . that kind of ripped me apart for a while." He inhaled again. "So I did surgeries and I worked out and I drank and I fucked women I didn't give a shit about and I was as lonely as hell.

"Then I got cancer. And, you know what? The first few weeks, in a way, I was relieved. I was relieved that there might be an end to all the crap. I could just keep working and be half-assed about the treatment and the decision would be taken out of my hands and it would all just stop."

Meredith couldn't bear to think of Mark feeling this way. And yet she understood perfectly well the momentary wish that everything would "just stop." She had felt it herself, more than once.

"That was why I invited you out for that dinner when I told you what to say to Derek." Mark was saying. "I was getting ready to die because the prospect of dying was so much more appealing than the prospect of living out my so-called life.

"And you know the worst part? If I didn't have cancer, I wouldn't even know any of that. Well, except when I was so fucked up on scotch I was incapable of doing anything about it and wouldn't remember anything when I sobered up."

He laughed softly and bitterly, and then took her hand and started playing absently with her fingers.

"I'd still be stalking Torres and smelling her in the elevator, and torturing Karev, and . . . being an ass. And I'd still have a broken heart. And the only person I consider my family would still hate my guts. And most importantly, I wouldn't have you. You'd be Derek's. I'd flirt with you inappropriately and you'd tactfully blow me off and I'd let you in on surgeries and that would be it. And instead of that, you're my lover and you're my friend and you've changed my life."

He breathed in deeply and let the breath out before saying quietly,

"Seriously, if I was stage 4, if I was about to die right now, I don't know that I'd regret any of this. But . . . it's hopeful; and we're hopeful; and I wouldn't change a thing."

He stopped playing with her fingers and held her hand tightly.

"I love you. I even kind of like myself. I never felt like that before, and yeah, the pain is sometimes horrible, but it passes. The pain I was in before never passed and probably never would have."

He grinned sheepishly. "That was kind of a long speech."

Meredith didn't say anything because, once again, she couldn't find her voice.

Awkwardly, Mark tried again to lighten the mood created by his uncharacteristic self-revelation. "I know you ordered the 'fucking afterwards,'" he said. "You didn't specify whether you wanted the talking crap afterwards part, though, so I thought I'd throw it in for free. I'm generous that way."

"No," Meredith began, trying to find the right words. "You weren't talking crap and I'm so . . . I'm . . . thank you . . . I'm so sorry . . . but I'm so happy that you—" In an effort to stop her own escalating ramble and convey something meaningful, she reached up and kissed him. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me too," she said, regretting that she couldn't come up with anything more eloquent but hoping he understood and that the kiss made up for what her words lacked.

"Yeah?" he asked, smiling.

She nodded.

"So, do you like the bed?" he asked, because the subject really needed changing at this point. "I'd intended to have Desiree get one, but I thought that ought to be something I picked out. So I, uh, picked this one." He paused. "And the linen . . . I got blue because it made me think of you. . . you're eyes, I guess . . ." He trailed off, seeking her approval again.

"Blue's good," Meredith said, then grinned. "The bed is _very_ good."

"Well, that's . . . good," he said. "And I have towels and shower stuff and the bath is sunk into the floor and has this Jacuzzi action going on. . ." He trailed off again. He didn't know what else to say, and he couldn't quite get over his discomfort with all the house stuff. He wanted to her to like everything about it, especially this one thing that he had arranged by himself.

Meredith laughed slightly. "You know, I live in Ellis Grey's dusty, memory-filled house and wash down unwanted muffins with tequila at 4:00 am and fight over who gets hot water for their shower. I'm not used to all this luxury—"

Mark stopped her with a kiss. "Then get used to it," he said. "'Cause I'd really like to share it with you. . . if you want to, that is." He looked down uncomfortably as he finished the sentence, concerned that he might be rushing her, and when she didn't say anything in reply, looked at her sideways without fully raising his head again.

She was smiling. "If it comes with you, then I want to," she said.

"Goes without saying," he said, smiling back at her.

"Here's the thing, though," she said. "I can't leave my house. I can't leave my friends. Not right now—"

"'S okay—" Mark interrupted, only slightly defensively.

"But . . ." she interrupted him back. "I'd like to visit. I'd like to visit a lot. And take up all your wardrobe space and leave girl stuff in the bathroom and shave my legs in the sunken bath and mess up the 'Jacuzzi action' with the hair." She smiled and twitched an eyebrow. "Is that okay?"

He nodded. He wasn't used to this kind of thing and, despite everything he knew was between them, a part of him had still expected disappointment of some kind.

Meredith narrowed her eyes at him, trying to figure him out. Eventually she said, "You have to get used to something too, you know."

"Yeah?"

"You have to get used to the fact that I'm staying. That I'm not going anywhere. And that I love you."

"I'm working on it," he said in a low voice.

"We're working on it together," she said, as she put her arm through his and rested her head against his shoulder.

"Shit," Mark said quietly. "Nobody ever said that to me before."

Meredith paused for a few seconds before replying, "Like I said. Get used to it."

She looked up at him and found that he was smirking at her.

"What?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I was just thinking. . ." he said.

"Thinking what?"

"That there are other things we should start getting used to." He took the coffee cup from her and put it down on the nightstand.

"Things like—?" But she broke off with a squeal, as he rolled her onto her back and straddled her.

"Things like . . . fucking _after_ fucking afterwards."

"And maybe after that. . ." Meredith giggled.

"Yeah," he murmured, sliding down her body. "Maybe after that. . ."

"And after that—" she mused happily, but the delicious things he was doing to her with his tongue and lips made her lose the urge to continue, other than to sigh, as she buried her fingers in his hair, with the sheer pleasure of loving him and being loved back.


	32. Three Months Later

Chapter 32, Three Months Later

It was 6:00 am. Mark, who had woken early, had decided to go for a run, leaving Meredith sleeping heavily. It was the first time he'd been running in over three months and he was pleased with himself that he had at least been able to try, but it hadn't gone all that well. His fitness level, unsurprisingly, had gone to shit and he'd had to give up part way through. Now, as he arrived back at the house, he was drenched with sweat and out of breath. He had even started to feel nauseous. It was runners' nausea, though, from dehydration and being generally out of condition. It had a totally different quality from the oppressive, painful, stomach-wrenching sickness he'd become all too familiar with. He hadn't felt that in over two weeks and, even if he couldn't really work out yet, everything else was better than he'd thought possible.

He was, Julia had told him at his last appointment, firmly stage 2 and improving incrementally. The metastasis had completely cleared. His immunotherapy sessions were less frequent and his body seemed to have adapted to the process, so the side effects were diminished. He felt more or less good. He was working full time again. He and Derek had worked on a few patients together and it had felt almost like the team they'd once been back in New York. And he had a sex drive; he was almost back to normal—but with one crucial difference. Only one woman. One fine, dirty-minded, flexible woman. Meredith. His own personal dirty mistress.

Entering the kitchen, he deposited the bag of bagels he had bought on the way back from his run on the counter, drank a glass of water, and poured himself a mug of coffee from the pot he had made before he left. He wandered out onto the deck, hoping to enjoy the view and his coffee as well as cool off a little before taking a shower. He was surprised to see Meredith hunched up in one of the large wooden chairs and staring out at the lake. Although his footsteps were audible, she remained motionless and silent, her back towards him, as he approached her.

"Hey," he said softly and crouched down beside her, offering her his coffee cup, which she ignored. "You cold?" he asked. She was dressed only in a pair of his boxers and her own thin T-shirt, and although he was hot from his run, the heat was quickly dissipating in the early, drizzle-filled Seattle morning and he was beginning to notice the cold.

"I'm fine," she said, hushed and expressionless, still looking out at the lake.

The whole time Mark had been with Meredith, the whole time they had been friends, she had never shut him out him like this; he was both kind of at a loss as to how to approach her and not a little freaked out. Nothing had been wrong between them so far. He fought against his own self-protective instincts and tried, once again, to reach out to her.

"This is good coffee," he almost cajoled her, moving the mug slightly under her nose to let her smell the aroma. She sniffed at the scalding liquid and glanced in its direction, carefully avoiding looking at Mark, but otherwise didn't respond. "It's that Italian stuff you said you liked." He was clutching at straws. Coffee had always seemed like a good subject for bonding and affection between them. Hell, _everything_, from the most trivial subject to the most difficult had been a good subject between them until this moment. He had never had such open conversations with a lover before. He'd gotten used to it. He'd come to depend on it. And now, although he knew it was an over-reaction to something that might blow over in five minutes, he was starting to panic at the thought of losing all the easy intimacy they shared.

"Please, Mer," he said. "Just tell me what's wrong." He shrugged slightly dejectedly. "Maybe I can fix it?" He put this as a question because he didn't have all that much faith in his ability to fix whatever was bothering her.

Still refusing to look at him, Meredith reached out for the coffee mug. Mark placed it in her hand, making sure she was holding it securely before removing his own hand. She took a sip of the coffee, exhaled with pleasure when she tasted the hot drink and briefly pressed the warm mug to her cheek to enjoy its comforting warmth.

"You were gone," she said, eyes fixed on the lake. "I . . . I had a dream and I reached for you—and you were gone."

"I went for a run," Mark said. "I couldn't sleep," and when she turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised questioningly, he instantly regretted the fact that a hint of the tone of voice he used to use when Addison, correctly, accused him of sleeping with someone else had crept into his speech.

He shrugged again and said, more gently this time, "I went for a run. You were asleep. I figured I'd get back and surprise you with . . . coffee . . . breakfast . . . me." On the last word, he gave a hopeful, slightly defeated smirk, not entirely confident that Meredith would consider _him_ to be a pleasant surprise right now. And, to his relief, she gave a slight laugh and smiled weakly at him.

"It's good coffee," she conceded. "And you're right . . . I do like the Italian kind."

"So . . . you don't hate me now?" Mark asked her uncertainly.

Meredith quirked an eyebrow. "I never _hated_ you," she said. "I just . . . wanted you and you weren't there. That was the first time." She paused. "I had a dream," she said again. "About my father. Thatcher. When I was a little girl." She took another sip of the coffee. "I guess I hoped that if you were there, it would feel . . . different. Better. And, maybe, something would change." She looked into his eyes. "I wanted something to change, and I thought you could make it happen. If anybody could . . . change things, you could. And you weren't there, so you couldn't." She struggled to keep any resentment out of her voice as she said these things. It would be self-defeating. She wanted his support, his understanding. She didn't want to do anything that would put him any more on the defensive than he already seemed to be.

Mark swallowed. "I think you might have the wrong guy," he said in a low voice, trying to lighten the situation by making a joke at his own expense.

Meredith shook her head. "No," she whispered and, unexpectedly and almost desperately, she reached for his hand.

"What's your father like?" she asked him cautiously. She was taking a risk. He'd asked her not to talk about his family. But a part of her hoped that, if she could get him to talk about his father, it might put him in the right frame mind to listen to her. And, yes, a part of her, that she couldn't quite conceal, was . . . pissed at him. She felt abandoned and overlooked by the person who she most wanted . . . most trusted to help her dispel these feelings.

When he heard her question, a reflexive wave of anger washed over Mark which he tried to hide from her, worried that he might fracture her renewed good mood and make her cold towards him again. He had to take a deep breath before he could force out any kind of deflecting humor. "I may have met him once or twice. Didn't really take to the guy," he said gruffly. Even now, when he was being asked directly about him, he didn't want to think about his . . . Doug . . . he refused to dignify that shit with title "father." Thatcher was self-evidently weak-minded and ball-less and he didn't want to seem to minimize the damage his abandonment had done to Meredith. But, Doug . . . Douglas Sloan, Esq., corporate lawyer and society sociopath and world's worst father of all-fucking-time was—

"Goddamn it, Meredith," he growled explosively. "Didn't I tell you that I don't want to talk about this?" He deeply regretted it, but he couldn't control his reaction. "Did you think I said that for my own fucking amusement?" He let go of her hand, stood up, and kicked aggressively at the slatted handrail that ran the length of the deck. "Fuck!" he said again and turned his back to her; it was now his turn to stare out at the lake.

"I'm sorry," he heard her say tentatively. "I had a bad childhood and—"

"I think we're all only too fucking aware of that by now, Mer," he interrupted her in a low, caustic, dangerous voice. Ah, fuck! What a fucking, shitty thing to say! He was sickened by his own spitefulness the instant this was out of his mouth and, as he turned back to her, he knew, as soon as he saw it, that her look of stricken vulnerability exactly mirrored his own.

He didn't even feel that he should go near her, although it was what he most wanted to do. He wanted to get back the connection that he had just stupidly and callously broken, but he didn't know how. So, from where he stood, he said, very softly, "I'm so sorry, babe. I'm so. . . " His words trailed off hopelessly, because there was nothing he could say to justify himself.

Meredith swallowed and nodded. "Okay . . ." she said deliberately, making an obvious effort to suppress her understandable dismay and anger. "That's okay, I guess." She shook her head slightly as she said this, as though she was trying, but failing, to understand something elusive, but continued. "It's okay. I can understand why . . . I guess . . . why you'd— Just come here." She held out her arms to him and he walked the few feet that separated them and then, without looking at her face, dropped to his knees, wrapped his arms around her waist and laid his head in her lap.

After a few moments, Mark felt her fingers playing gently with his hair and sighed, feeling undeservedly forgiven.

"I'm an ass," he mumbled indistinctly.

"What did he do to you?" she asked, determined to make at least a little headway with this subject. If he could answer her question, maybe he'd be more open to being there for her.

Once again, Mark felt pressured and even taken advantage of. But he also felt that he owed her some kind of a decent response and so he half raised his head and said, "He was a cold, heartless bastard and he didn't give a shit about me." He inhaled. "And he left me with my bitch of a mother," he added quietly.

"Your parents were divorced?" Meredith asked. He knew she was only seeking common ground, but he wished she would stop with the fucking third degree.

"No," he said. "He just wasn't around much and when he was . . ." He shrugged and then gave her a sardonic smile. "Still, there's some good news. He's dead. He died a few months after I finished med school." He sat back on his heels. "Okay?" he asked her, more abruptly than he wanted to, and touched her arm briefly in apology. "Since you took mine," he said and smiled again, feigning playfulness and hoping to bring the whole dismal subject to a close, "I need to get some coffee." Or several very large scotches, he thought bitterly. And he stood up and walked back into the kitchen, where he lingered over the coffee pot, trying to regain some semblance of composure.

* * *

Until Mark had cancer, until the series of fucked-up dreams that had plagued him, he had tried not to think about his . . . the people whose vicious charade of a family had brought about his birth. He had succeeded. He had even succeeded in pushing the memories to the back of his mind. He was happy with Meredith. He was happy that Derek, his real family, was his friend again. That was all he needed. He sure as hell didn't need _this_ crap! He got that she had problems and he sympathized with her. And he knew he'd been unfair to her, because she'd never referred to her issues except in the context of telling him how much she loved him. But being there for her and actually _talking_ about this demoralizing shit were two very different things. Everything more or less worked when he didn't think about any of this, and he wished she could just leave it like that. Constantly being reminded that he was fucked-up . . . _self-loathing and self-destructive_; God, he'd hated seeing that shrink . . . did absolutely nothing for him. It didn't help; it didn't change anything; it just made him feel hopeless.

He braced himself against the counter and sighed, assaulted by an awful sense of despondency that he didn't even understand, when he was startled by Meredith's voice.

"Hey," she said and her soft, mollifying tone of voice let him know that she was trying to make peace with him. It was only with a great effort of will that he stopped himself from being a total ass in response.

"Hey," he said curtly, not turning around and not adding anything else.

"You feel like looking at me?" she asked him warily.

Mark sighed again. With his back still facing her, he said, "Please don't ask me about my past."

"Okay—" she said.

"Yeah, you say that," he broke in, "but you still do it. And it doesn't fucking help. It just reminds me of—" He turned abruptly to face her and searched her face desperately for understanding. "I'm related to these fucking people, Meredith. And I don't want to be reminded of that." He looked at her pleadingly. "Can you understand that? Can't we just leave it that I don't have a family?"

She took a deep breath. She knew this was going to be badly received, but she needed something more. She still thought that if she knew just a little, she could help him; and then maybe he could help her.

"What did they—?"

Mark groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. "Just 'no,' for fuck's sake!" he erupted, simultaneously bringing his hand crashing down onto counter in front him. It was only at the last second that he had the presence of mind to open his hand and strike the hard granite surface with his palm rather than his fist. "They didn't _do_ anything, Meredith." He sighed and continued in a low voice, roughened by the emotions that were coursing through him. "My mother was a drunken, critical, sleazy bitch; and my father was . . . absent . . . cold . . . I don't know. And they had this façade; this superior, upscale, patronizing thing going on, even though they were the most fucked-up people on God's earth." He had no idea where this was coming from. It felt like the sort of thing he might have wanted to say when he was 16 or 17. "I was never good enough for them. Nobody was ever good enough for them." He paused and took a breath. "I was 26 when I last saw either of them; I didn't go to my father's funeral; I refused the money he left me in his will; I fucking hate them and I don't want to talk about them or think about them. So please . . . " his desperate look intensified, "please don't ask me about them." He looked down and muttered, "If you want to talk to me about Thatcher . . . your mother. . . whatever, I guess that's okay. I don't think I'll be much use to you. But, you can talk about it, if you think it'll help."

"But right now . . ." He glanced at her and then looked down again. He needed her to understand him and he wasn't sure how she would react. "Please don't take this the wrong way," he said. "But . . . you think you could leave me alone for a while?"

Meredith hesitated. Being asked to leave him alone when she most needed him frightened her badly. It also seemed to her that he was cutting himself off from comfort when _he_ most needed _her_. She found that she was shaking and she tried, desperately, to control it, not wanting him to see her reaction.

"Please . . ." he said, only just stopping short of begging her.

"Okay." She finally found her voice. "Just give me a minute to change and . . . maybe you can call—"

"Aw, fuck, Mer," he interrupted her. "I didn't mean you had to leave the goddamn house. It's a big house; there are a lot of rooms." He almost smiled. "I just need to get it together . . . I just need a little time. I don't want you to leave." And he looked into her eyes and seemed almost . . . almost but not quite . . . like himself. "Please stay. Just give me a while to figure stuff out."

"Okay," she said again, even more tentatively and controlled her developing panic just about enough to leave the kitchen.

* * *

Back out on the deck, Mark sipped his coffee and stared out at the lake. He liked the view of the lake. It was what he most liked about the house; the main reason he'd bought it. There was something about it that . . . calmed him, made him feel . . . better. . . peaceful . . . he didn't really know what it made him feel, he just knew he liked it.

He had more or less lied just now to Meredith. He _had_ wanted her to leave. He'd wanted to be completely alone. In fact, what he'd most have liked was to leave the house _himself_, find someplace he could get trashed and pick up some bar skank and fuck her until he couldn't remember this morning's conversation or feelings or the way his remorse nearly killed him every time he thought about Meredith's face.

Too bad there weren't a lot of opportunities for that at 6:30 in the morning— What the hell was he thinking?! He couldn't do that to her. He couldn't do it to himself. Being with her had changed him. The problem was he didn't know what else to do to drive away the depression that was threatening to envelop him and that he didn't even understand. All she'd done was ask him about his family. Shit! He'd only had to say he didn't want to talk about them; made some reference to Derek being the only family he cared about and left it at that. They'd have been fine . . . they'd probably have been making love right now . . . if he could've just kept his scary and fucked-up emotions in check.

He sighed and leaned back in the roomy, wooden chair. After a few minutes, he felt himself becoming drowsy and he gave in gratefully to numbing, consoling and, thank God, dreamless sleep.

* * *

Not quite knowing where else to go, Meredith had made her way back up to Mark's bedroom. She thought about taking a shower, but it seemed like too much effort. She thought about calling Cristina, but Cristina was unpredictable. Talking to her when Meredith needed 'her person' usually worked better face to face. You never knew with Cristina whether you had her attention when you were talking on the phone. One time, Meredith had poured out her heart, half-wasted on tequila, and Cristina had eventually replied, "You know, what you need . . . for a complex pulmonary adhesion procedure . . . is a da Vinci surgical system." And right now, minutes after her beautiful love story had apparently imploded, she didn't think she could bear to hear about fantasy surgical procedures, or worse "Well, what did you honestly expect? He's Mark Sloan for God's sake!" To be fair, Cristina probably wouldn't say that. She seemed to quite like Mark now, and she liked Meredith and him being together. But nevertheless, calling her seemed, much like taking a shower, to be just too much effort.

Now unable to control her shaking, partly from cold and partly from the feeling of utter desolation, Meredith crawled under the soft, thick blue comforter and curled tightly on her side, hoping that sleep would come and stop the need to think about anything at all.

* * *

Meredith was aware, in the moments before she fully awoke, of a feeling of absolute warmth. Her dreams had been full of panic and confusion and then, suddenly, everything felt right and safe and . . . warm. And as awareness slowly came back to her, she realized why. Mark was there. He had curled around her . . . almost enclosed her with his body . . . one leg thrown over hers, his arms tightly holding her around her waist and his chin resting on the top of her head.

"Hey," he whispered softly in her ear, when he felt her stirring. She started to reply but he stopped her with a gentle, "Ssshh. I need to say something." He paused before continuing and when he spoke again he sounded faltering and uncertain. "I . . . over-reacted out there on the deck . . . and afterwards . . . in the kitchen . . . and I'm sorry." He planted a brief, soft kiss in her hair. "I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I'm so crappy at this stuff. But . . . I'm here for you. I love you. Can we . . . can we just forget this and be how we were?"

To Meredith, if she was honest, if she hadn't been close to frantic to regain 'how we were' herself, this would have been a naïve question. Experience told her that nothing was ever really forgotten. And she still felt, somehow . . . deserted; as though something that mattered had been allowed to slip away; been _forced_ to slip away. But she wanted the feeling of safety back. Even if Mark couldn't talk to her, he could make her feel safe. If only he had been there when she woke from her dream, she would have been fine. He would have made her feel safe and that would have been enough. It was enough. He was enough for her just how he was.

She nodded and, when Mark felt this, he kissed her again, absolutely relieved that she'd accepted him, because a part of him had been scared she might never want anything to do with him again. He sighed inwardly at his own stupidity. He could so easily have screwed this up; not just by how he'd acted towards her, but by his narrowly avoided compulsion to be self-destructive and fuck everything up before he'd gotten fucked over again. He saw, clearly, how unnecessary this was with her. He saw, again, how much she loved him and how much he loved her.

He swallowed. "So, you going to call me on it?" he asked her quietly.

He felt Meredith shake her head questioningly. She had no idea what he meant.

Mark swallowed again. "We made a deal, remember?" he said. "I said I'd stop pushing you away and talking crap, if you'd call me on it . . . or something like that."

Now she remembered, and she nodded.

"So . . . call me on it," he said.

"It's okay—" she began.

"Seriously, Mer," he insisted.

"Well . . . then . . . you're an ass," she began uncertainly as Mark listened in silence. "I needed you . . . and you . . . I _need_ your help. I need you to love me when . . . I'm not perfect. You can't freak out and reject me and almost smash up your hand every time I'm not completely happy. Because I'm _not _completely happy." She paused. "I could be, though, with you . . . if you'll just. . ."

She trailed off as he drew her closer and held her. She'd said enough.

A few moments elapsed before he replied. "That's what you do when you call someone on something?" he murmured in her ear. "'Cause, if it is, those interns of yours have it _really_ easy."

Meredith squirmed in his arms until she'd turned around to face him. Maybe nothing had been lost. Maybe this was important; to fight and come through it the other side. And Mark was trying. Even if he wouldn't talk to her, he was trying. "So, we're good?" she asked softly.

"Yeah," he said. "We're good. Just as long as you forgive me for being an ass and . . . still love me." He hesitated. "I still love you."

"I forgive you," Meredith replied. "I love you," she whispered. "Nothing changes that."

Now he felt really awkward; he couldn't deal with this kind of statement after he'd been such a shit to her and he had to change the subject to something easier. "So . . . I didn't take a shower yet, and I kind of stink after running," He shrugged. "You want to come with me and, maybe, fuck in the shower a little?" And what had begun more or less as a deflection, now started to turn him on as he thought about what he could do to show her how much he loved her.

"No. . ." she replied. "I don't." She grinned playfully at his look of dismay, before adding. "I don't want to fuck in the shower _a little_, I want to fuck in the shower _a lot_."

"I believe that can be arranged."

"Yeah?" She twitched an eyebrow. "Because so far this morning, Sloan, you're all talk and no action, and—" But whatever she was going to say next was cut off by her own laughter as he deftly flipped her over, picked her up and put her over his shoulder and carried her into the bathroom. Putting her down, he stripped off her clothes, then his, and turned on the hot, pounding water as she watched him, smiling dirtily.

He stepped into the shower and invited her to follow him and once they were both inside, he slid the door closed and pushed her up against the tiled wall.

"Want to see a little McSteamyness, Grey?" he growled in her ear, then laughed at his deliberate, yet still sexy, self-parody and winked.

"Oh, I suppose it might pass the time," Meredith teased, feigning boredom that she most definitely didn't feel.

"If you want to pass the time, get a vibrator; or check back with O'Malley. I'm planning something much more stimulating." He smirked. "Any objections if I blow your mind?"

_**Fin**_

* * *

A/N: Thank you so much for reading. If you'd like more, the sequel to this story - _And Then There's Life_ - can be found at my profile.


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